Dear You Dedushka
by Anime Borat
Summary: An old war hero searches for his granddaughter and comes to a quite little place. No action here. Just family and comfort.
1. An Unhappy Reunion

**Dear You, Dedushka  
><strong>

Hi guys. This story had been hanging around my head before Call of Duty: Black Op's official release. I waited for many months but was shattered to learn that Reznov died. However, the twist from Treyarch's exclusive posters revealed an encrypted message about his real fate and the e-mails Hudson received implied he is still alive. Yay! It was inspired by both Higurashi and World at War and Black Ops. Please read and review.

_June 19, 1984 – Showa 59_

In the busy streets of Japan a woman has made her way home to her apartment. It had been a busy day for her and was only glad to reach sanctuary from the hectic rush hour of the afternoon. She unlocked the door. She went to the kitchen to have a drink of water. The moment she entered she was greeted by the sight of two men in kitchen. She gasped at the two figures sitting at the table. One of them is a man in his fifties, having a mustache and some stubble adorning his face, making him look like he had a thin beard. The other man was a bearded old man, his hair turning to gray. He sat on a wheelchair and his fierce steel eyes stared back at her, almost angry. They both wore rather conservative black suits.

"Dobryy den, Mrs. Akihito," The wheelchair man replied almost contemptuously.

"Huh?" He voice shook with apprehension, "Who are you? How the hell you get in here? What do you want?" She could not believe that these men got inside her house quietly. Mrs. Akihito was stunned by how this man knew her name. His voice sounded foreign, like those Russian people at the movies. She trembled in fear, not understanding how or why these two men are in her home. She also sensed a vague feeling of familiarization, of recalling that very sound of a Russian voice.

"Please take a seat, ma'am," The other man said diplomatically.

"You haven't answered my question. I want to know why you broke in-"

"We will answer you're questions so enough!" The wheelchair man snapped brusquely. "Sit down."She nodded and obeyed. She pulled a chair from the table and sat on it.

"You look a little thirsty," the wheelchair man observed. "Would you like a drink?"

She simply nodded and pointed in the refrigerator.

"Mason, would kindly as prepare drinks for us? Our host is not at ease at the moment," the wheelchair man asked.

"Sure thing, Trent," the younger man smiled and walked to the refrigerator.

"Oh, please, Mason, just call me Victor. Let us not bother with theatrics since our time here will be brief." The wheelchair man waved off. She guessed that name man's name maybe be Victor Trent. Trent then faced her again, his face turned into a frown. "Do not fret over the refrigerator. Mason here has already inspected the fridge as a matter of security protocol. He knows what he is doing," he said to her in his heavy Eastern European accent.

She looked over the counter and saw Mason taking a Coke, some lemons, ice and some Stolichnaya vodka from the fridge. He closed it and walked to the counter. There he began to mix the drinks like a bartender. She looked back to Trent. It seemed like an hour and the only thing breaking the silence was Mason mixing drinks. Then she finally broke the silence.

"Excuse me, Mr. Trent. Why did you come here?" She asked hesitantly.

"I am here on some personal affairs that need to be settled," he replied. He then asked her a question. "Do you know anything about your family, Mrs. Akihito?"

She stammered in surprise, "My… family?"

"Yes. Your true family," Trent replied. He never let go of his steely stare, which seemed to bore into her soul, searching for an anomaly or sin.

"Here you go. On the house," Mason said as he put two glasses filled with the Cola-vodka mixture with a slice of lemon and two ice cubes added. He then took back to his seat with a glass of his own.

She could not speak. She never knew her real family. In fact, she had been to two families. The first one, which adopted her, died in a bus crash when she was seven. Then spent some time at that horrible orphanage at the outskirts of the city. The beatings, the crying, the long nights punishment were all too horrible to remember. Her stay lasted eight months though as a new family adopted her. The ever-smiling orphanage-director, a horrible monster pretending to be a guardian to lost children, was just too pleased to see her go.

He then added, "Please. Feel free to speak. No one is pushing you to make haste."

She remained silent for a while. Then she said, "I have no idea who my real family is."

Trent regarded her for a while. He then asked another question, "Do you remember what happened to you before you were seven?"

"I have no idea," she replied, "I was too young at that time." Trent didn't look convinced.

"You may think you are too young for anything," he said softly, "but try to think. Look back. Look back to beyond the first family who took you in. I'm sure you would. Drink some of it if you have. It is good tonic for your memory" Trent adjusted himself a bit on his wheelchair. She didn't know what he meant. It seemed dubious to think back at first. She drank some of the Coke-vodka to ease her self. Then other thoughts flooded her mind.

She recalled the smells of wood smoke, pine and often of tobacco from an old man sitting on a chair. Of music blaring from a radio recited in a foreign language. She remembered seeing a woman with short chestnut hair who looked like her daughter, who now lives with her divorced husband. A man came in to the the house and delivered something that sounded bad, something about someone missing. The song that played in her mind seemed to repeat the name 'Katyusha'. Then her mind transferred to a boat in a stormy sea at night. She could remember the violent clashing of waves against the frail wooden vessel. She recalled the smell of salt and fish, and most of all, the woman, who was accompanied by what looked like a family. A scarf wrapped on her head, she smiled at her and said something to her which couldn't understand. The sky crackled with thunder and was lit up briefly by lightning bright as the sun. A man struggled to keep the boat from pitching around the sea. The last thing she remembered was screaming and a wall water bursting into the cabin of the boat, washing everyone inside. The next thing she knew, she was on a beach where a man and woman picked her up.

She breathed heavily. It's coming back to her now. She put away her glass and set it on the table. She regarded the two men. Mason took a sip with a blank expression on his face. Trent's expression had softened to one of disappointment. Then it softened to one of concern.

"I know you do not know me," he said, "but I am much closer to you than you ever thought."

As she tried to absorbed those words, another scene flashed into her eyes. In the room was a picture of her and several men, all in uniform. Everyone seemed to have a happy time, especially the woman and a bearded man in the center. He had the likeness of Mr. Trent, only much younger. Next to him are two soldiers, one wearing a fur cap with a red star, just like the bearded man; the other wearing a simpler cap held together by a piece of cloth. The woman wept silently in the kitchen. She walked of the kitchen and wiped her tears out of her eyes. She then looked at her child. She let out a thin smile.

"... Zoya," she tried to comfort her, "I'm sorry. He cannot return here with us as he promised." She looked back longingly at the photo before turning back to her. "In fact, he may never come back. They... took him away." Tears formed on her eyes again. "We must leave soon." She then lifted her and walked upstairs with her.

Her hands shook slightly. She regarded the man in front of her. It became increasingly clear to her now, but one piece of the puzzle is missing. It hanged tantalizingly in the air. Her faced remained puzzled as ever.

Mason tapped Trent's shoulder and whispered something into his ear. He said in Russian, "I think she's having hard time. I don't think we should be pressing her. Maybe I should handle this."

After rubbing his jaw for a while in contemplation, Trent nodded in approval. Mason turned to Mrs. Akihito, "Um, ma'am, this man here is Victor Trent, a war hero from the Soviet Union. When he was arrested over false charges, his family attempted to escape and defect to the West. Tragically, however, they lost their lives at sea. He believes that his daughter is still alive."

Mrs. Akihito bowed hung her head slightly as she thought about the tragedy that befell on his family. She felt deeply saddened about Trent's loss. Sorrow that had became unbreakable for him to bear had not his daughter survived, if she was alive. She said sympathetically, "I'm sorry... I didn't know you have lost your family. I don't know what to say."

Trent's anger was softened and he no longer felt bitter toward her but remained slightly upset. Still, what she did elicited his disapproval, his disgust over her affair that resulted her divorce and her carrying of the name Akihito. Her daughter, he learned, suffered greatly from the separation. He let out a soft sigh, resting the enclosed palm of his hand on his for a while turning to her. He looked straight into her eyes. "Yes... I lost a daughter and a good wife. A woman who I loved and planned to spend the rest of my days with her. I cannot believe that fate would so cruel as to take everything that is precious to me. I slept too soundly far too many times as to allow the gray wolf to take them." He closed his eyes sadly.

_Gray wolf?_ she thought. Then another memory entered her thoughts. She was on the train, in a box car. The woman and several companions huddled against the cold of the winter outside, its winds howled and lashed against the walls of the box car. She cried loudly and the woman turned to her and began to sing to her. Of the words sang during that night, the words she recognized with clarity and understood each one of them.

She sang as she smiled...

_Bayu-bayushki-bayu,_  
><em>Ne lozhisya na krayu.<em>  
><em>Pridyot serenkiy volchok,<em>  
><em>On ukhvatit za bochok<em>  
><em>I utashchit vo lesok<em>  
><em>Pod rakitovy kustok. ..<em>

She cradled her in her arms and slowly drifted to sleep.

Mrs. Akihito sang slowly in a language she thought she never knew, as if in an emotional trance, "_Bayu-bayushki-bayu,/Ne lozhisya na krayu./Pridyot serenkiy volchok,/On ukhvatit za bochok/I utashchit vo lesok/Pod rakitovy kustok..._"

Trent's eyes opened wide and tears formed on the edges. His voice became heavy and sang with her very poetically, "_Bayu-bayushki-bayu,/Ne lozhisya na krayu./Pridyot serenkiy volchok,/On ukhvatit za bochok/I utashchit vo lesok/Pod rakitovy kustok..._ "

Alex Mason noted the lullaby, he understood Russian fully well and knew the translation of the lyrics.

_Baby, baby, rock-a-bye_  
><em>On the edge you mustn't lie<em>  
><em>Or the little grey wolf will come<em>  
><em>And will nip you on the tum,<em>  
><em>Tug you off into the wood<em>  
><em>Underneath the willow-root.<em>

The woman's eyes became watery as she learned of the truth. It had shocked her and saddened her greatly. Something that was purged out of her life became increasingly clear. She looked into his eyes and saw the sadness in them.

"It wasn't easy, Mrs. Akihito." Mason remarked, downing some of the Coca-cola he had used to make the mixture, "But I owed this man a debt and this is how he chose for me to repay it. He's been worried for you all these years."

"I... can't believe... after all that time, you were still there." Mrs. Akihito simply couldn't arrange the words to describe how she felt. Which part of it couldn't she believe? That her father, who had vanished from her life some time before she could remember thought, returned? That he had come all the way from Russia to find her? Or was it something else that she couldn't quite place?

"Neither can I. I was so thankful to hear you were still alive, even after that storm took you from me so many years ago. It is difficult to describe..."

Trent's eyes glistened a bit. "I see that the tragedy has not left your mind and still has scared your heart. I'm sorry for not being there." He then began to tell his tale , "And my name is not Trent. My real name is Viktor Reznov. I joined the Red Army and fought for the Motherland when the Germans broke through the doorsteps and laid wastes all throughout Russia. I've seen men killed in action against them. I've seem others die in their brutal hands. The war reached my home, Stalingrad, and I fought bravely and ferociously against the fascist invaders who sought to destroy my country. But the one thing that ignited my rage was how those fascist bastards crept up to my father's bed and slashed his throat. My father died for he played his music during the darkest hours of the siege. It inspired my countrymen to fight on. The Germans would not have of it and killed my father like lamb in a butcher shop. That was were my war really started.

"During the bitter and horrible fighting, I came to cross the paths of two people who were important to my life. First was a young soldier from the 62nd Rifles Division, Dimitri Petrenko. His unit were fresh reinforcements sent to the front and took horrendous casualties during the fighting. He and I survived a massacre at a fountain orchestrated by a German general, Heinrich Amsel, a bloodthirsty savage ogre of a man who murdered both combatants and innocents throughout Stalingrad and its vicinity in his quest to further the empire of the fascist Reich. We were able to sneak past his men, link up with Dimitri's unit and finally kill that bastard before escaping to the river with him.

"The other person was someone I know but never struck a real acquaintance until that very day. Raisa Aramova."

"My mother...?" Mrs. Akahito asked hesitantly.

He nodded slightly, "Yes... your mother. She was a Corporal in the militia. We had been friends for some time before the war but it was during the day she fished me and Dima out of the water, my eyes had shone with the sun when I looked at her face. She dragged me to the field hospital where we nursed back to health. Ah, Raisa. During that time in the hospital, after she came out of a patrol, she would tell me jokes about how I was the attention of all the ladies at the pub and how she was never affected by my manliness... And I joked back about how I often have lapses forgetting about her. However, our love has blossomed slowly and Dima would make jokes about how hard I tried to hide my affection for her. Six days after the siege ended with the surrender of Paulus' Sixth Army, we married and had a honeymoon. After a blissful three days, I moved up to the front and bade her farewell. She moved back to her family's town in the east. I promised to come back when we the war is over."

Again, her feelings were mixed. Here is a war veteran who has come back from the cold, the dead, to reunite with his family... his only loving family. She doesn't know what to do.

"But it was not meant to be. After our victory in Berlin, through all the hardship and violence that culminated in the ending of the war, I was assigned to duty in Arctic north. I was falsely arrested for charges which I am innocent of and had been in prison for long until 1962 where I helped my friend Mason escape and I left in the process. For years after leaving my hellish living tomb I learned that my family had died trying to defect from the Soviet Union, from the _Rodina_ where the corrupt Party continues to rule with an iron fist." Reznov paused and finished his drink. He was careful not to mention about the secret mission of recovering Nova-6 and the triumvirate of Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner. "I first came here to Japan to learn about the whereabouts of family, since I learned that was where my family was thought to be lost. I could not find you however and had to move on, a futile and tragic pilgrimage to regain something I lost. Then I found Mason again."

"Your friend with you," she noted to Mason on the left, sitting beside Reznov with an appropriate poker face.

"Yes... After my sojourn in Japan I settled in America and contacted my friend. He thank me for helping him out of that hellhole labor camp and said he would return the favor. It was not easy though. He ran into some difficulties with his employers. A sort of labor dispute so to speak." He lied about that one. Mason and his party are hunted by the CIA due to his alleged mental instability when in fact it was because Mason had saw through the lies his own government had sown, the cover-ups of many hidden battles and truths. The most jarring among of them was Frank Woods, who was officially pronounced dead by the Company, but turned up alive in Vietnam, sitting inside a rat-infested river cage. They escaped with Reznov's help and launched an unauthorized rescue to save Frank. Even knowledge of the CIA's decision was kept secret from their own, since Hudson had many friends in the Company and it would have sowed dissension in the ranks if the operation was exposed.

"So... how was it? How was the dispute?" She asked curiously, not minding the gnawing pain in her chest, caused partly by sadness and also something she didn't know.

"It's still pending, Mrs. Akihito. Right now, we are allowed to go as we please while the hearings are set sometime in the next few months," Mason replied. "We just have to worry about the a few snoopy journalists, that's all." CIA agents no doubt.

She didn't reply for a while. This very moment was earth-shattering. Unbelievable. A lifetime of minor yet considerable unhappiness hadn't prepare her for this day. It felt bittersweet for some reason she couldn't fathomed. She was both surprised and genuinely happy to see him but she couldn't reach out to him. Something held her back. Something dark and... _It can't be... Does he even know?_ She finally said, "I'm... rather glad to see you... I knew little of my real parents... I never knew something like this would happen... I-I..."

He wiped his eyes. The pain his chest surfaced.

"I know. But from what I've learned of from your life, something had shattered my heart." Reznov looked away from Mrs. Akihito, to her surprise.

"Wh... what do you mean?" She asked, standing up in spite of herself.

Reznov's eyes lowered to the floor. This single gesture seemed to make his entire body droop with sorrow.

"Did you not have a daughter?" He asked. Akihito's blood instantly ran cold.

Her glass shook visibly, trembling a bit that a some of its contents have spilled over from the brim. Mason decided to say something so she wouldn't go into shock from that revelation. He said politely, "Mrs. Akihito, I mean, Aiko, we learned from a number of sources concerning about your marital status. It seemed that you divorced your husband over some matters I wouldn't like to mention and that your daughter had an angry disagreement with you."

"I... y... yes. But, it happened long ago..." Making a few more weak attempts to speak, she slowly sank back into her chair, drinking the rest of the cola-vodka cocktail in a single gulp.

He quickly looked looked back at her. "A long time ago does not mitigate the outrage you did and it does not lessen the pain of your daughter. How could you let her pay for your offense?" He cut her off with a slightly raised voice. He then sighed slightly and averted his gaze away from her again. It pained him to learn that his daughter committed such an act like, without any heed to the consequences that spread out like a bullet wound through the body. The wound can be treated and the recovery will be full but it would leave a scar that will remain in the remainder of one's life. He could not raise his voice at his daughter for she had her mother's hair and her father's eyes.

Mason put a hand on Reznov's shoulder, which, while calming his words, did nothing to ease his frustration.

"I'm sorry..." she nearly in tears choked in her words. "I didn't know..."

Reznov finally regained his composure and replied, "Had your mother been alive and by my side right now, she would have died heartbroken. What were you thinking?"

Again, she couldn't say any words. She was ashamed of her actions. She never really felt anything about it until now. The shame of her actions before had finally hit her. And it seemed her father before her was the agent of such punishment. Reznov whispered harshly, "I've seen men die in the battlefield because their commanders abandoned them to die. I've seen neighbors cooperate with the Germans for food as well as small paltries. And worst, I've seen what their puppet governments had done to their people in the occupied regions. In Poland, the Baltic, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine and Belarus. Sham of betrayal, of giving your friends, your family, your people up to the enemy, is the greatest sin a man can commit and for that he must pay the ultimate price. What you did was no less done what had been mentioned." Reznov took a breath, as he shook pale with subdued rage. "The man you married devoted himself to you and your daughter. How could you so thoughtless?"

Mrs. Akihito- Zoya- could not reply. Already she felt guilty for not considering Rena, for not considering her husband. Mason calmed Reznov down again. The woman was sobbing quietly now. Already her guilt had manifested in front of them. Reznov was quite stern and fatherly when she talked with her. He felt a little bad for snapping at her but she had her sins to be accounted for. She finally calmed down and look forlorn on the table.

"You've broken my heart... Zoya. I wish this was a dream it it is not. I wish you had not committed it but we cannot change what had passed. There is one request I asked of you as a daughter however."

She sniffed, "What's that... father?" She felt whatever he asked for, she cannot deserve forgiveness from him.

"Where is your daughter? Where is she now?" He asked.

Mustering whatever will she had left she replied, but not looking in his eyes, "She lives in Hinamizawa... With her father..."

"Where is it?"

"It's some backwoods village somewhere Gifu. In the mountains." She replied.

"Your mother's family came from a village in the Urals." He corrected her sternly.

She hung her head in shame. The silence was once again heavy. Reznov sighed sadly. He said to her again, "I learned that you have a child with this Akihito lover of yours." She looked at him. "Take care of the child and see to it that its every need is attended. You failed once. _Do_ not fail again. God can forgive because I could not." She nodded slightly. "We will be leaving now. Do not forget everything." They began to leave the room, not noticing her as she sobbed again silently.

They left the building, Mason wheeling Reznov across the street. It's not easy for them to look inconspicuous in the crowd, especially with a man on a wheelchair, thus cannot move undetected but a crowd is the surest defense against assassins. Their pursuers want to take them down in the shadows; not in public since a killing in broad daylight might attract the unsavory investigative attention. They looked calmly and uneasily before proceeding to the next street. It was no clever ploy, however. The CIA may not kill them in public through an appropriate "accident" but they can still follow them into wherever they go unless cleverly lose them. Some passerby courteously offered to give them assistance but they politely refused. Mason and Reznov must guard against the possibility of a CIA operative blending in the crowd and using it to approach them covertly before making the kill or of a hired gun, whose time and skill may be payed in in dollars, francs, or deutschmarks. Or maybe local thug or professional wanting to make an extra profit for an unknown employer, or tipped-off unit of the KGB whose orders are to kill them for whatever the reason. So many possibilities and Mason decided to stop speculating and continue moving on. They wandered around the city, ostensibly as tourist when in fact, they trying to identify who might be following them, then expertly lose them.

They are still hunted the CIA after escaping from Operation Chaybdis in South Africa. Mason, Hudson and Weaver are considered threats to national security. Mason most of all, as they believed he was "burned" or mentally unstable. Also his two friends as they continued to support him, including the raid where they rescued Frank Woods out of Hao Lo prison, also known as Hanoi Hilton. Reznov saved their lives, leading them to Johannesburg where they would escape. He, however, lost use the of his legs when a British SAS operative they only know as Jonathan shot through them when they escaped into the bush. They saved Reznov's life and their hides by hiding in a ramshackle clinic belonging to a black doctor who is connected with the leftist-leaning African National Congress. The doctor gave the Russian some expert medical help and would have saved his legs had he had access to first-rate medical facilities, but in Apartheid-run South Africa, he was bared from that such due to his race and status as a marked man; the Afrikaner authorities suspected he treated casualties of the ANC's military wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe(MK). They had spent three days hiding inside roached-and-rat-infested secret compartments where he kept medical supplies while the police and the CIA ruthlessly combed the township for them. Mason, Woods, Hudson, Weaver, and Reznov owed the doctor their lives.

It had been a dusk when they finally sure that their shadowers have lost them. They entered an ordinary bar and restaurant who has some respectability as a watering hole for the well-off and Reznov took a table in the corner as they could watch the comings and goings of the occupants of the bar. They scanned the room carefully for anyone who might be out of the ordinary or any sort of deviation of routine and action. As much as they want to be drunk for the failure of their quest, they had to be careful about what they drink. Alcohol could relax their vigilance and they would compromise themselves to anyone with the intention of following them and that their conversations would overheard by any nearby patrons, whose ears might be turned up in curiosity. They ordered their dinner and drinks on polite, neutral voices. They chatted for about the weather. Mason suggested to Reznov to try the sushi, despite some mild protest from Reznov, who didn't understand why would people prefer to eat fish raw. He did try though, safe in the knowledge that his stomach was hardened by eating rough food, first the rations he ate during the war, and then the wretched gulag food.

It was already eight in the evening as the two shared drinks in a bar. Mason looked at his watch, slowly stood up and walked to the telephone booths while Reznov stealthily kept watch. The ex-marine turned hunted CIA agent carefully paced his steps as he approached the phone booths across the room. Reznov saw two people, a couple, stood up from the counter. They obviously had a little too much of the drink and they staggered out. The Russian discounted them as a threat and turned back to his drink but not without a quick sweeping glance of the room to see everyone. The CIA does not sent operatives on "extreme prejudice" assignments alone. They usually work as team, where one group performed reconnaissance of the targets, another has command and control and a third who will commit the dispatch mission. And the dispatch group has a backup group whose job is to intervene if anything goes wrong and continue the mission if necessary. The time it took for Mason to walk to the phone booths was no less than forty-five seconds. Just as he arrived, the phone rang. He waited for three rings before he picked up the phone.

"Hello?" Mason asked.

"Willis, it's you," replied the caller. "How's your deal with the electronics firm?" The real message has been understood already. _Mason, what's your status?_

"Uh, yeah. We secured a contract that we'll put into effect next week," _Hudson. Me and Reznov are secure. No one tailing us but his soul-searching seems to have a dead-end_.

"Okay, Burke, how's your research?" _Are and Weaver you not compromised?_

"Looks good. I found some books on poetry folklore that I need for my new book," the caller cheerily replied. _No, we're fine and Woods has transport waiting for you. Meet us at the rendezvous point_.

"Oh, that's nice. Looks like you've got lucky." _Where?_

"You're not so lucky yourself. In fact, you could never have out of the gotten first grade without my help." _Same place, same time. If thing go wrong, employ emergency procedures and move to point Abram_.

"Alright, see you at the alumni anniversary next month," _Understood as planned. Proceed to the next phase.  
><em>

"See you there," _Alright, out_.

The conversation was over. He hung up and replace. The dialogue was cleverly designed to sound like a conversation of friends for the benefit of any pursuers listening in to them. Standard procedure as it has been taught at Camp Peary, Virginia, also known as "The Farm". He left the telephone unhurried. He walked back to the table and sat down. "We'll need to get going again soon, Trent. The car's not going to wait."

Reznov stared down into the empty glass, at the one last drop of vodka that always remained at the very bottom, with a distant look on his face. "After so long. I have never known such a crushing failure as this. She was brought up to be an opportunist. A scavenger. If I had been able to teach her properly..." He poured yet another glass of the clear spirit from the bottle on the tabletop. "This... could have been a happy reunion."

"You can't dwell on it forever, Viktor. Please... we all have our regrets. Sometimes your trust is placed in a lie. If you need to learn, learn your lesson and move on. My dad... told me that. A long time ago. He also told me that there are somethings in life you couldn't control." Mason replied.

"And to what can my daughter say, 'my father told me that'? I certainly never told her to abandon her child and her marriage, simply because she had bore the child of her love! And to think that her husband had made efforts to further her own chances of success! It is like leaving your men to be eaten by wolves just for goddamned advancement!" He pounded the table loudly, startling some nearby patrons. Reznov recalled bitterly that the day he met Dimitri was also the day of his betrayal by Dragovich; he promised reinforcements but they never came to stem the tide. A cold, necessary sacrifice made for the sake of his ambitions.

"Her daughter _did_ chose to stay with her father during the settlement," Mason pointed out.

"She is no better than Dragovich and Kravchenko," Reznov said sharply. Then he turned to silence.

Mason pondered for a second, as Trent tipped back another shot of vodka. "The one who was hurt the most was Rena. Her daughter." He remarked offhandedly. "What do you think she thinks of that?"

The grizzled hero of Stalingrad stopped for a moment. He remembered about his wife who lovingly sent letters about how she would like to see his daughter. He longed for it... If only he didn't accept that mission in the cold arctic... If only... His friend was right. There are some thing in life beyond his control. At that time he had orders to follow and he couldn't refuse them. What happened in the past cannot be set again. What he could do was to settle it, bury it. There is not much for him to live for anyway. And he must settle everything before he leaves this world.

"It must be hard for her," he said sadly. "She is all I have left in this world." He looked glum.

Mason said comfortingly, "You started this journey when we escaped from Vorkuta. Now you can finally finish it and be at peace. We'll see it through the end."

Reznov finally smiled. His smile was one of that reflected the Russian character, where the face turned happy but never the eyes. A smile where happiness and sadness joined hands together to walk into the evanescent sunset that herald a passing of another day, knowing it may be the last. He replied to him, "Thank you, my friend."

They both stood up and left the restaurant. Minutes later they wheeled into a dark and deserted back alley where a car just arrived. Mason got in the car's passenger seat while two of the cars three occupants helped Reznov and packed the wheelchair in the trunk. Woods on wheel asked Mason, "How was it?"

Careful about his words since cars are easily bugged. "Not so good. Let's get some shut-eye."

"You got it, Mason," Woods replied happily and they all drove back silently around the city for a while before hitting their hotel.

* * *

><p>Author's note: Dedushka is the Russian word for Grandfather. The story was partly inspired by Reznov's and Rena's weapon of choice, Rena's past from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. Freaky, huh? This is my first time to try dramatics. This chapter was partially inspired by the <em>Bourne Supremacy<em> scene where Jason Bourne reveals the truth to the daughter of the politician he assassinated.


	2. Dark Is The Night

**Dark Is The Night**

A/N: Here's the second chapter, guys. I've been quite busy with other works and struggling with the occasional writer's block. Here we have finally our favorite characters of Higurashi stumbling into a piece of Rena's past. And this gives some more of Reznov's trip down memory lane. Hope you guys enjoy this. _Higurashi no Naku Koro ni_ is property of 07th Expansion and _Call of Duty: World at War_ and _Black Ops_ is property of Treyarch, no copyright infringement intended, lest Reznov and Rena hack me to death. Sorry if I had skewed up some of Higurashi's lore.

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><p>Rena led everyone to the wrecked van, which is located in Hinamizawa's dump yard, the abandoned construction yard where the dam was supposed to be built, now used by the residents of the village and others locals nearby to dump their refuse. To most people, a dump is an unsanitary place, something to be avoided at all cost. To Rena and, gradually, her friends, it was treasure trove, where you can look for valuable stuff thrown away by people, giving credence to to the saying 'one man's trash is another man's treasure'. Naturally, some of her friends do not share Rena's penchant for treasure hunting in the dump but that changed when they found some neat stuff in there, including, much to Keiichi's joy and subsequent embarrassment, a box full of Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Tonight was a special night for Rena.<p>

"What's the rush, Rena?" Keiichi asked as they walked through the dark woods on their way to the dump.

"I'll show you when you see it," Rena replied cutely. "It's special."

"What's so special, Rena?" Mion asked. "A life-sized Kenta-kun doll?"

The redhead giggled. "It's a surprise, Mi-chan."

"It's in the van, right?" Rika asked. The pint-sized shrine maiden of the village was wondering of what Rena found in the dump.

"Uh-huh," Rena chimed.

"Whatever, it is, let's see it," Satoko piped.

With flashlights to light the way the gang made their way through the woods. They arrived at the dump and walked carefully through the hills of refuse, careful not get cuts on on their arms and legs or worse. Getting injured in a dump was no laughing matter, where simple wounds might led to complications due to its unhygienic nature. They made it to their de-facto clubhouse, the abandoned Volkswagen van in the middle of the dump.

Rena picked up the latch and pulled it out, the front window of the van squeaked open. Inside was the redhead's special domain. Adorning the walls of the van are the various knickknacks she collected all around the dump. Taped to the roof is a map of the constellations. There were stuffed toys and some dolls on the sides of the van, arranged on top of boxes set up like furniture. There's bookshelf with several books and other reading material. There were various collectibles displayed everywhere else.

Rena actually made this place quite presentable and her friends commented how she made it like a home. As Rena got in, she help everyone enter one by one. Often times her friends enjoyed meeting here at times to tell stories, play games and pass the time after school when the feel it's convenient. For anyone who might wonder why they come here besides Rena's eccentric choice, it's because that part of the dump is just non-biodegradable junk.

"Where's the surprise?" Keiichi asked.

"Right there," Rena chimed, shining light into the back. At the back where the rear doors are is a large green footlocker. Its paint is faded and had some peculiar script written in yellow with a red star on top. Embossed on the star was a hammer and sickle crossed together. Between the script and the star is the acronym CCCP. Their eyes went wide with wonder since it could only mean one thing: it's Russian.

They all settled down. Rena lit up an electric lamp, illuminating the inside of the van.

Keiichi was astounded to see Rena having what literally looked like it came from the Iron Curtain. He asked her, "So this this the surprise... Where did you get it?"

"This looks like something from the Reds..." Mion remarked, knowing that was what the Communists were called in the West.

"I found this box in when I cleaned the house," she replied. "I asked my dad where it came from and he said I inherited it from..." she stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes were obscured by her hat.

Keiichi stepped back a bit. "I'm sorry, Rena," he apologized, "I didn't mean too..." He recalled that her relationship with her mother has been severely strained a few years back.

"That's alright, Keiichi..." she replied slowly. She looked up and their eyes locked together. "I know it's from my mother..."

Rena received a comforting pat on the back from Mion. "It's okay, Rena. I know you still can't forget that... but we're all here... We're your friends."

Keiichi piped in, "Look, whatever it is, it's gone now. It's all in the past."

Rena nodded, having understood what he meant. That everything they've been through was finally over, that they unshackled themselves from the chains of fate and can live their lives the way they wanted. She took a seat beside Keiichi, nudging herself between him and Satoko. "Thanks, Kei-chan," she said. Then a smile beamed on her face slowly as turned back to the box.

"Anyway, what's inside the box?" Satoko asked.

"Let's find out," Rena chimed. Rena opened the lid of the box, raising some dust from it. That caused some coughs and got Rika to sneeze, which Rena found cute.

The inside of the box was covered with a grey blanket. Excited in feeling yet quite posture and movement, they removed the cover and saw all sorts of things underneath it. She shone the light them. Revealed where some books; among of them a Bible, a copy of Karl Marx's _Das Kapital_, plus some books with the same peculiar Russian script; an assortment of musical instruments including a violin, a guitar; a spade; some notebooks, and other personal possessions.

"Wow..." Keiichi said in awe. "What is this stuff?" They rummage through several items to find some knives including one that looked like a miniature version of Rena's cleaver. It gave him the chills whenever he saw that or anything like, especially in Rena's hands.

"Hey, Rena," Rika called out as she dug out a worn short-handled spade, "if you're going to the dump next time, let me join you." Everyone giggle.

"Hey, nice mug," Satoko quipped when she fished out a battered tin cup the type used by soldiers in those old war movies.

"Rena, looks like quite a collection you have here...," Mion noted. She picked out a large uniform coat out of it, the color of its fabric faded, almost as if it just a shadow of itself after it was worn by its owner. The uniform had red and gold pipings on its collar. She then found several more clothes, including a leather jacket with wool lining.

She then found another item, a medium-sized box with with written in big yellow letters. She took it out and opened it. She found things that are completely different from the other items in box. It was German uniforms and military gear.

"Wow!" Keiichi exclaimed. "Now that's a jackpot!" He commented. He picked up an officer's peaked cap and put it on. He stood erect and shouted as though he was an army man, "I'm a German officer! Respect me or I'll have you shot!" That earned a lot of laughter from everybody.

"Hey," Satoko said. "Check this out." She held out a leatherbound book, its binding worn smooth and crack while retaining a sheen. It was locked by a leather strap which was held by a button.

"Let me see, let me see," Rena chimed as she crawled to Satoko in a hurry.

"Careful, Rena," Keiichi advised. "That book looks very old."

They all gathered around Satoko. Rena shone the flashlight to see it. Satoko fumbled with the strap.

_CLICK_

The strap snapped out of its place and the book was opened. On it were pictures that were taped to the pages, paper that has turned yellow and crinkled with age. Each picture was accompanied with the same undecipherable script they saw earlier, save for the numbers which indicated the year.

Everyone crowded around to look at them. Keiichi muttered, "This is the USSR..."

No doubt in everyone's minds that they were looking back at an era in time. Here they see a city in Russia called Stalingrad that would later earn fame as the site of the decisive victory of Russia over Nazi Germany, where the German Army was crushed and the Red Army won eternal glory.

In many of the black and white pictures, however, they saw a city at peace, a city where progress reigns. In it were crowded streets and bustling tramlines. People going to work on factories and office buildings. In other pictures were domestic scenes. One of them was a man playing a violin in front of some notes. There were also scenes in the countryside such as wide fields full of people gathering harvests and taking them to big machines that separate grain from chaff and large woods where people live in log cabins.

Then they see some startling changes in the pictures. One of them, a young man in uniform smiling with several others in a bar together with several lady friends, most likely their sweethearts and fiancees. One woman however stood out as she has no companion among the uniformed men. She had a smile that reminded Rena of herself. On the look on her eyes...

Keiichi looked at Rena as she stared at the woman. She had short hair like Rena's, with that smile that might have been cute, almost like her own had she been the redhead's age. The young man in the middle had his eyes on her. Rena felt a strange ethereal connection to the woman. What it was or why she had no idea. She felt something floating around at the fringes of her mind it was too far for her to reach it and the journey of getting back was difficult.

She heard Keiichi's voice in an echo. "Rena... Rena..." They seem too faint for her to listen.

Rika tugged the redhead's skirt. "Rena-chan, are you alright?" she asked innocently.

Rena was back in the real world. She turned to Rika in surprise. "I'm fine." She smiled.

"Seems to me like you're staring at the picture," the little purple-haired girl pointed out.

"Oh, it's nothing," she chuckled.

"Why don't we see the rest of the pictures?" Satoko suggested.

They then flipped the pages of the book to see a more gradual change in the pictures. First were the ones whose years stated were 1940 and 1941. The people in the pictures looked more worried while others featured military parades. Some people crowding around public places to listen to men in uniform making announcements from time to time, most likely to warn about the impending conflict.

In one photo was a young man standing proudly with the violin player, who was probably his father. It was difficult to discern from the script to know what the message was. As they flipped through more pages, it was all apparent at the later 1941 pictures that war was coming as more many people, soldiers and civilians, were patrolling the streets. Many men, women, and children were busy digging ditches, stuffing bags with sand, stringing barbwire, and planting concrete triangles at the outskirts of the city. Policemen and city workers were putting up signs and directing traffic and more over, people carrying bags were crowding ferry stops and train stations.

Everyone hesitated as the looked at the photographs. Like a scene of a bedtime story which was told to them from time to time, they knew where this would lead. It felt tense for some reason.

Keiichi then said, "I think we should read this tomorrow."

"No," Rena persisted. "I think we should read this."

They all nodded their consent as they flipped the pages. Now in the photos the streets were filled with troops, trucks and tanks marching through the city streets, many people waving flags at the men who were marching into battle against the German invaders. They were all marching in full parade formation. Other pictures show them standing in attention in large public places where they they received audiences prominent civilian and military officials, their podiums adorned with banners celebrating Lenin, Stalin and Karl Marx. Other photos have them settling in prepared positions and camps in the flat steppes outside the city.

In the photos was the man again. This time he was bidding the violin-playing man goodbye, most likely to move to the front. In other pictures the woman appeared. She was in uniform too, smiling with friends. She was often seen marshaling civilians, soldiers or trucks to safe zones across the city. Sometimes she would stand guard at some street corner, her bayonet-tipped rifle slung in her shoulder and holding the strap.

There also scenes where she would bee seen taking a break, taking tea in a pub. Rena felt the connection with that woman grow stronger as she read on.

Rena held her breath as she flipped the next set of pictures, labeled 1942-1943. Now the brutality of war had hit the city in full force. There were now photographed scenes of demolished and burning houses. People were dead or running around the streets while large planes flew overhead like migratory birds, dropping their deadly payload of bombs over targets, military and civilian alike.

Rena's eyes turned wide open when she saw a crying mother holding her dead child in her arms in one picture, a dead man lying face down with his body battered horribly. Rena felt her hands tremble at looking at him, reminding her of the horrible deeds that she had done and had been in turn.

She quickly turned the page to avert her eyes from that macabre picture, only to see a whole new collage of them. The city that bustled with life was now completely remade into a mass of charred ruins. Gutted shells of buildings with their roofs collapsed, sides of their walls turned into piles of rubble. Smoke rose from them in massive pillars and fire lit the skyline. Streets were clogged with rubble and fallen telephone poles; pockmarked with craters, and littered with bodies and wrecked trucks, cars, and tanks.

Also in the scenes were heavy fighting in carnage. Soldiers of both the German Army and Russian Army fought in the gutted buildings. Firing from the windows and doorways; running across ruined streets from one building to another; taking cover in craters, ruins, barricades and wrecks; in more sedate scenes, sitting around a fire, tending to their wounded comrades, and keeping an eye out for attacks from a hiding place in countless destroyed buildings.

Sometimes the ground was muddy with large puddles and sometimes it was covered with snow during the cold winter. The soldiers and people looked tired, huddled in coats, eating their meals or drinking from tin cups.

In those scenes, the woman appeared again. She was tending casualties in their beds and bringing fresh ones on stretchers. She was also seen in a crowded headquarters building operating a radio with a headset. In one picture she laid on her belly behind a pile of rubble to avoid being seen by the enemy.

"Who is she?" Satoko asked. "She looks like you, Rena."

"I don't know..." Rena replied slowly. She then turned the page to see a color photo. It was dated 1943. It was her, this time with the man again, accompanied by two younger men just beside them. Rena brought the book closer to study the picture.

He had red hair while she was a brunette. They were both smiling and appeared the man had grown a beard, a rather manly kind.

"Hey, Keiichi," Mion taunted. "This guy makes you jealous."

"Why is that?" he asked skeptically.

"Because with that beard, he's more of a man than you'll ever be."

Everyone laughed lightly while Keiichi blushed profusely. He puffed up, "I-I can grow a beard. Just wait and see, Mion." He could not stop blushing.

When the laughter faded away, they all turned back to the book. In the picture the couple never looked any happier. There was laughter in there eyes and it seemed that they were relieved that they may have won the battle. The two young men had their arms on each other's shoulder. One of them beside the couple had a smile that radiated his youth despite the dirty and scraggy appearance his stubble-ridden face took on and had a tin cup in his free hand. The other young man looked quite surprised, with a clean-shaven face with a bonnet tied over his head like bonnet.

It was most likely a victory picture as it was flanked with others that showed jubilant soldiers and civilians, dancing, drinking toasts, of flag waving and German prisoners forming long lines as they were marched off to the rear.

Rena felt sleepy. She closed the book as she let out a yawn. She turned to Keiichi and asked in a sleepy voice, "What time is it?"

Keiichi obligingly shone the light on the nearby clock. "Oh my gosh," he exclaimed. "It's eleven o'clock."

Realizing that they have been dallying in the dump for most of the night, they stood and hurriedly rearrange everything. Rena wanted to bring the box full of WW2 mementoes and artifacts with her but Keiichi and Shion explained that they don't have the time to bring it out.

"Come on, Rena," Mion said. "We could do it tomorrow. In the mean time you have that book we found. You can read it."

Rena nodded sadly, reluctantly agreeing to them.

Feeling bad about it, Keiichi added, "Hey, we could get it back tomorrow. Just be sure to be up in the morning."

Rena felt happy again, nodding vigorously. She then skipped happily back to her house ahead of everyone.

As Rika was trailing behind the others, it was an opportunity to chat with Hanyuu. She found it rather curious about the collection of war mementos she possessed, coming from the Soviet Union. Moreover, she felt that Rena had an uncanny resemblance with the woman in the picture. And the bearded man as well.

She said, "Hanyuu, it seemed rather curious that Rena would have that sort of thing in her possession. Are you sure that she's from Hinamizawa?"

Hanyuu began to blush worriedly as she searched for an answer. Sweat began to rain from her head as she stammered. Rika fumed. Hanyuu, worshiped by the village as Oyashiro-sama, could not answer her directly. She, of all people and a god for that matter, should know who's who in the village and their lineage spanning generations. "Well?" she huffed in demand.

Hanyuu finally found that answer. "Yes, Rika. Her family had been in Hinamizawa for centuries. I'm kinda worried about what those items mean."

Rika's ears turned up at Hanyuu's misgiving. Ever since their new world was formed, Rika was always attentive to Hanyuu on anything out of the ordinary. She said, "Explain."

"The Ryuugu family has always been peaceful for so many years, always contributing something to the village and staying out of trouble. Nobody in the Ryuugu family had ever been involved in any sort of violence, even if some of them leave the village. There were times when the village was so big that some people have to leave. It's usually by lottery."

Rika then remembered about why the village's population has never grown so big, it's population always remaining at the limit of two thousand. Contrary to the established folklore about the curse of Oyashiro-sama falling on those who leave, some people do have to move out of necessity. During hard times the Three Great Houses sit together to decide about to how to solve problems involving scarcity of food, not unusual during war or extremely bad harvests. It was eventually decided that some people have to leave but to execute the plan would have to overcome some problems. At such times not everyone in the village could get along with each other so there was a possibility of bias. Then came the idea that lottery was the best way of dealing with it.

"Yeah..." Rika replied. "I think I remember... the stories that were told by my mother about the lore of the village."

At a religious ceremony at the shrine the lots were cast on who should leave the village. When the lot was picked the name or names of such individuals were announced. After that, the 'winners' would undergo a cleansing ritual before they pack up and go to the outside world to rid themselves of the curse. It wasn't until much later in the village's pre-Meiji history that the Houses instituted the policy of isolation when much of the village lost most of its young men in a minor peasants' revolt. That was made to keep anymore of the villages' families from being bled dry. No mention was made of Rika's other bloodline as being the reason for it as well, truth known only to her.

Hanyuu continued, "But Rena's violent behavior isn't really in character with the Ryuugu's before the cycle of Endless June." She gulped and wailed worriedly, "Hau~, it would be like the time when I first came to the village. Everyone turned to violence because me. And my daughter gave me away as a sacrifice for the village's sins." She still bore painful and horrible memories of that violent era. Killings, paranoia, blood feuds that even the Houses were powerless to control due to so many of their own numbers were being decimated.

It dawned to the purple-haired girl that whatever story those artifacts reveal may herald trouble for the very balance she fought to establish. An example was the recent cycle of summers which she had ended. While Takano may have been the perpetrator of Showa 58, Rena was the catalyst for it all to happen. And Keiichi was the catalyst that helped pull them out of the abyss.

Rika thought with a shoulder. After having lived and died through many worlds attempting to change the direction her fate had taken, the last thing she wanted was a disruption in the equation of reality that she worked so hard to balance. One that resulted in the world she and her friends have lived in peace. What if unearthing the past would destroy everything she bled for? What if it would happen all over again?

"Rika," Hanyuu pleaded, "it's scaring me."

Rika thought about this carefully. Any action taken imprudently or mistimed might turn into a downward spiral of endless suffering, a cycle of repeating their fates, new fates, all over again. She finally said, "Hanyuu, did you feel anything out of the ordinary?"

"No," the horned goddess replied. "I don't think so. But I feel that it could change soon."

"I see. Then we'll wait. We waste time worrying now. We should wake up early tomorrow to see if there really is a change in the wind," she concluded.

"I hope you're right, Rika, hau~."

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><p>Reznov could not sleep. He contemplated all the events had transpired and in turn brought him here. Just as his quest for vengeance against Dragovich consumed him, he was also motivated searching for the whereabouts of his lost love and his child. Back in the war, he had received a letter from his wife that they had a little girl, he was jubilant. He and Dmitri danced and got drunk with joy on the night.<p>

Back then, he sat atop the turret of a T-34. Receiving a letter was rare for many men in the front. He had just one letter. It was from his wife. It warmed his heart to see that his beloved had sent him a letter. Giddy with anticipation, he slit the edge of the envelope open and carefully took out the letter so he would not soil the words with her dirty hands. He started to read it line to from top to bottom...

Seconds later he leaped to his feet and screamed jubilantly into the starry sky.

_I will be a father in the spring! _It must have been that night on leave, when they were wed by a civil as well as a secret liturgical ceremony. Religion was officially banned in the Soviet Union and Reznov was ambivalent about the topic but his dear Raisa was a sentimental lass, who could not shake off her old beliefs. Reznov grumpily complied. Turned out the priest who would be administering the sacrament was an old neighbor of his, currently serving in a _Shtrafbat_ or penal battalion. He was genuinely surprised when they met each other and decided to indulge in the old man's wish to a be a priest for one last time before he would be sent to the front. Dimitri Petrenko appeared alongside as his best man.

_You're a lucky man,_ Viktor, Dimitri exclaimed. _I envy you. You have a sweetheart whose heart you captured while I still have to woo the girl of my dreams back home_.

_Your time will come_, Reznov assured him. _You have time and again cheated death since Stalingrad_.

_As long as she still remembers me_, he chuckled in wry humor.

_If you keep on sending her letters about how you are doing at the front, she will eventually yearn to have a hero in her arms. The man who drove the fascists back to the west!_

_I wish so_, he said hopefully. He then produced a bottle and they took out tin cups to pour the vodka in. They then raised their cups in a toast. _To a fine daughter, Viktor, and to the health of your beautiful wife_.

_And your health as well, dear Dimitri, to a future with a family and all glory to you as a hero of the motherland_, Reznov replied and they both drank. There were tears of joy in their eyes as well as grief in the knowledge that only with the greatest fortune that they would come back home alive. Reznov to his wife and daughter and Dimitri to his own life to start a family. They silently knew but they would never say such a thing. Dimitri was a fine soldier, a fine young comrade ready to live his life once the war was over.

_By the way, where's Chernov?_ Dimitri asked.

_He's still working on his cholera_, Reznov replied. Chernov, who had been with them for five weeks, developed cholera and was absent for six months. They both had a hearty laugh before they eventually drank themselves into dancing.

It was one of the best memories he had at that time before their push into Germany.

He then thought about how got to Japan after he escaped from Vorkuta. He was able to give the authorities the slip after letting Mason escape. It had been a gamble to turn Mason to his goal during their captivity in Vorkuta, the escape plan, and the oddysey that sent him east. First to the Urals to find whereabouts of his family and when he learned that they were trying to flee further east, he traveled through dangerous territory, avoiding heavy screening by the KGB and Dragovich's own pack of loyal GRU. Retracing his wife's steps, he followed them to the desolate port of Rudnaya Pristan. From there he stole a fishing boat and escaped into Japan.

The first time he ventured into the land of the rising sun, he had set foot on alien territory. It reminded him of stories told by the veterans of the Russo-Japanese War, old men who seat together for tea and vodka while trading stories at the end of the day. They said something of the Japanese being a fiercer version of the Chinese, short bantam men who have the fanatical streak of the tiger and the fox's devious cunning. He was told that Japan was a hotbed of imperialism and capitalism. One of them, who had fought in the First World War, described them as "Having the fox's cunning and the Tartar's savagery in battle." Apparently at that time, that old veteran who uttered it meant they were very fierce fighters. However, that took on a whole new meaning when he read the news articles in _Pravda_ about the so-called Rape in Nanking. They also possessed Tartar's penchant for cruelty mated with a Turk's lying tongue, and the presumptuousness of a British man; they practically lied through their teeth about their bestial conduct when the world demanded answers. The veteran, after reading the news article, said to him not to trust "the shifty, devil-eyed bastards."

He shook his head that out of his head as he went about his business. The Japan he escaped to was very different from the picture he constructed from what little information got about the country. He expected to find a country turned into a backwater, devastated by the war that they arrogantly started and were so ignominiously defeated.

Instead, he found a very modern, very contemporary nation. It looked so different from his home in Stalingrad. So different from Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, and other cities in Siberia, who were nothing like the better cities west of the Urals. They were closed to even many people in the Union, full of ramshackle buildings, dirty streets, and ill-clad citizens. Only in winter was the best season in those places, the snow hid all the dirt. Stalin cared little for his people and even many of his heroic soldiers. The Party was no better, little more than grovelling lackeys with petty ambitions.

It had been an awkward landfall, having to dispose of the boat when he did as they there was a curfew instituted at the area he landed. He had a hard time with the local Japanese, who were quite polite and humble, a far cry compared to the articles in _Pravda_. He made inquiries of a fishing boat that crashed long ago. Often times they mentioned about the only survivors were a brown-haired woman, who died shortly, and a baby.

He then met the couple and inquired them about where they found the baby. When he told his story the couple wholeheartedly allowed him in, almost with sympathy as if he was a long-lost relative. He was given a meal and a decent place to rest, followed by some used clothes they bought from the old-clothes dealer on the next day.

He was taken to a simple quite grave in the woods outside of town. Reznov was distraught. His dear sweetheart gone, died trying to escape Dragovich's clutches. She never survived to see her husband come back to her. The realization was like a sword being ran through him. He went down on his knees...

And wept.

The couple watched in sympathy as they saw a man broken down, not knowing that he had survived the brutal battlefields of Eastern Europe, enduring privation and combat for his love of the Motherland and loyalty towards his friends; winning glory by triumphing over the fascists in the Reichstag, participating in one final mission where he experienced betrayal, sent to rot in a wretched labor camp.

It had been a tearful reunion. When he finally gained control of himself he was told about were he could find his child: an orphanage in the remote areas outside the city. They explained they couldn't adopt the child on their own due to the poverty common during the immediate postwar years and they feared being arrested by the occupational authorities for harboring a Russian.

This filled him with renewed hope. At last fate has been merciful to him, letting his only child, the fruit his and Zoya's love, his only proof of existence in this world, survive. After a night with them he thanked the couple for their kindness and continued on his journey in first light.

As he traveled towards the orphanage by train, by bus and by foot, some thoughts hovered in his mind. Thoughts that he knew he must face sooner or later.

The most regretful thing he did was using the American named Mason. When he entered Vorkuta, he initially distrusted him for the most obvious reason: he was an agent of the Soviet Union's archenemy, the United States of America. He followed suit like what most prisoners did with newcomers, especially foreigners captured by the Red Army or KGB: never give a damn about him. Occasionally other prisoners gang up to beat him, usually resulting into a clash that had to be broken up. Some would steal his food.

But the one thing that got sparked his friendship was when Mason defended Reznov against some suki, bitches in Russian, who were the guards' lackeys. In the ensuing chaos the two fought back-to-back with incredible ferocity before the melee was violently broken down by the guards.

After that, they spent time together in solitary confinement. During that time he got to know the American. They realized that they were not so alike. Just like Reznov, Mason's father fought against the Axis, where he won a medal in a place called Makin Island. The medal in question was the Purple Heart, given to does who were wounded in battle. That drew a puzzled raise of the eyebrows from the old Russian, who could not believe a man was awarded a medal just for getting shot in combat.

After that first time they spent together in a cell Reznov noticed that Mason was exempted from double work orders that he had to do and was always escorted by the guards. When he followed much as his limited freedom allowed he noticed that Mason was always taken to the infirmary's isolation ward.

And he saw Dragovich, Steiner and Kravchenko exiting from a car and walking in the direction of the infirmary.

Reznov felt fire burn inside him as he watched at the men who destroyed his life walking in a measured gait towards the building. They killed his best friend at the Arctic circle during the autumn of 1945 and left him to die. When they found out that he survived, they sent him to Vorkuta where he was imprisoned without trial.

A guard called him, threatened to beat him if he doesn't obey. With reluctance he was ordered back to his cell along with everyone else. In the following few days Mason never reported, no mention of the American was made during the his talks with the other prisoners besides being sent to the infirmary.

One night he had his answer.

Having cleverly altered his duties with the help of a prisoner serving in the infirmary he was assigned by a dull-witted chief guard to clean the isolation ward. There, his eyes would not believe.

Lying on a table surrounded by the three bastards was Mason, dark rings around his eyes staring blankly into the harsh lights in the otherwise dark ceiling whilst laying atop a gurney, strapped in a room full of machinery, among them a record machine playing a woman who recited a random sequence of numbers from time to time. Near him were medical tools on tables. Without doubt he was tortured as his heavy, tortured, labored revealed.

It crushed him to see this man so brutalized. Then a cruel logic formed in him as he continued to observe from the darkness, unseen from that he wanted to kill, reining in his passion for revenge as he watched the drama like a hawk. He thought of Dimitri, who never made it out alive from that Arctic hell. Somehow, avenging him was now possible, even by someone else's hand.

The German, Steiner, said to his master, "The subject has been successfully implanted with the knowledge to translate the number sequences."

"So what is the problem?" Dragovich asked skeptically.

He explained, "His responses to our orders have been sporadic. Unpredictable. He shows a remarkable resilience."

"Why?"

"He is unusual... atypical. Few men possess such will...Our other test subjects have been far more successful."

Dragovich looked visibly piqued by this. "If he will not follow the orders embedded in the numbers, then he is of no use to me...He can rot. Take him back to his cell."

All three left with Kravchenko in tow. Reznov realized that he has use for Mason. Even if he died, since it was most likely, the American would be his avenging angel, ready to spread his wings someday when he could snatch the life out of those wretched men.

He approached Mason towards the table. The American blinked his eyes as he saw his cellmate. "The pain is difficult, isn't it?" he said. "We are brothers, Mason... We are the same." Reznov gritted his teeth_. "_Dragovich. Kravchenko. Steiner. All must die..."

"_All must die..._" Reznov quaked as the last three words repeated themselves. He felt so guilty for using Mason, no better than what Dragovich did to him and what his daughter had done to her husband so shamefully. He looked out the window to see the moon blankly as he mentally recounted his previous journey in Japan.

* * *

><p>He found himself at the door of the orphanage. He it was a forbidding looking place, like the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. It was such a feared place during the Great Purge of the '30s. The NKVD snatched people who were even thought of subverting Stalin's control of the country, almost never to be seen again. The only activity of life in this place seemed to be the people responsible for this place.<p>

He knocked on the door.

The door opened and a heavy-set man appeared to greet him. He was dressed in some sort of uniform, probably one for low-level civil servants.

"Yeah," he said gruffly. The man was short and squat, with his feet planted firmly on the ground and wide apart. He reminded Reznov of the guards in the hellhole of Vorkuta. For some reason he wanted to crush this man completely, more so than what brusque greeting he received warranted him.

"I would like to inquire about a child here," Reznov said politely, unmoved by this dolt's gruffness.

"Ah," he replied, "come with me to the office." Reznov reluctantly followed him in. Inside he surveyed the place as quickly as his eyes would allow. The building look aged, the wood sagging under his, producing an occasional creak; the walls had paint peeling off from their surfaces. Some of the other people had that same look as his guide: hard-looking, gruff or cynical, putting on a smile when they actually faced him. For some reason Reznov's tightened his hands into fists.

But thing that he noticed little by little were the children. In one room he passed, he heard them recite their lessons in a sullen manner. They had a look in their faces that reminded him of people that were liberated from the viscous Reich's prison camps, and, more recently, of his comrades in Vorkuta.

He finally arrived at the office. He was introduced politely by a man who dressed like a underpaid bureaucrat. He had a more pleasant personality than his own underlings.

"How would I help you?" he asked with a measure of hasty eagerness.

The Russian cleared his throat and reached into the pocket of his jacket. "I would like to know about the whereabouts of a child who used to be here." He fished out a picture and then gave the date in which his child was brought here.

"I think I could help with that," the man who resembled a pretentious, minor _nomenklatura_, replied. He approached a metal file cabinet and began accessing the records.

As he waited he in his chair, he was about to whistle an old patriotic tune when he heard a sound.

A faint leather-sounding snap. It was then followed by a cry, a shrill cry of a boy, followed a shout of abuse from a rough adult voice. Something was amiss here. The more he heard it, the more he found himself in Vorkuta, where guards held power over the prisoners, where crushing forced labor, beatings, maltreatment where the order of the day.

He felt his breath and his eyes turned at this administrator of the orphanage. He felt a passion that could only be dissipated by one act...

"Ah," he chimed, fishing out a folder. "Here it is." He still had that smile, oblivious to the sounds of a child being beaten. "And I would like to ask your name, please?"

For an answer, Reznov stood up and with a yell, lunge at him savagely.

* * *

><p>It was by late sunfall that Reznov was finished. During the ensuing chaos he had turned the orphanage, if it deserved such a name, into a battleground. He had turned the men, weak men who abused the powerless children just as their confederates in Vorkuta abused him, into wrecked sacks of meat. He turned loose on them his combat prowess, honed in the battlefields and in the prison yards, obviating their strength in numbers and brute strength, taking them apart by picking them off one-by-one as a hunter would to a herd of deer. He made use of whatever he had in his hands into devastating objects of his rage. He poured that rage into savagely, making the more cowardly quake. These men too did not escape him as well.<p>

Reznov freed the children, who were equally frightened of their liberator, just as Jesus, angered with His Father's house of worship turned into a profane marketplace, freed sacrificial animals that day. After which he proceed to beat the living hell out of one of his victims yet again.

The men pleaded, telling him that they just did it for the money. Reznov's rage heightened and the man was reduced even more into a whimpering, bloodied worm.

He then proceeded to give a very special punishment to the administrator, who tried to flee when the fighting was over.

He tackled him down and tied him up. The administrator whimpered in fright as the Russian held him by the hair and brought brought him close to his face.

"You..." Reznov said shakily. "Brought up these children... for money..." The tone was accusatory, the venom unmistakable. "You and your bastards deserve for more in hell... And you yourself deserve even worst..." Reznov then dragged the screaming man back into the back yard, where he proceeded to beat him and lashed his back with some thin young branches. As if his suffering was not enough, he endured Reznov's boot heels. His screams reverberated throughout the woods.

Police later found the children, terrified but unscathed. They later rounded up the other orphanage personnel. They tell in incoherent stutters of a strange bearded man wreaked havoc on them. When the authorities arrived at the place, they saw its interior ripped apart by the battle that ensued in it.

Eventually they found the administrator. He was already dead, his face frozen in a mixture of fear and pain. It would have looked pitiful, pitiful in that not that he was an innocent victim but the kind of pity given to common thieves: a mixture of sympathy for their plight, disgust for their unsavory profession and satisfaction for their well-deserved fate.

The autopsy reports conducted show he died of suffocation. The cause: force-feeding of curry mixed with coins and bills. The mixture was popping hot as indicated by the burns of esophagus lining.

Ever since then in the locality, Reznov was referred to as Kuma-san or Mr. Bear. His legend was of a man looking for his lost child, only to have her taken away by evil men, and he wrecked vengeance on those who harm children. It would continue to be told in the years to come.

* * *

><p>Reznov was at the limit of his endurance. He blinked his eyes and realized that he needed to sleep. Before he was a man of action, capable of enduring even thriving in the harsh conditions of combat. But time in the gulag and the accompanying wandering and hiding, broke his strength, living only his spirit intact. His present state made him wish for combat and his crippled legs didn't help but he rejoiced in the knowledge that he would finally leave the world. What he needed to do now was to tie some loose ends close to his heart.<p>

Reznov later reclined on the bed, dozing off to sleep. To dream of a better time where his journey would finally end.

A/N: Another chapter well-done by me. I'm not sure about how Russians feel about Japanese during the Second World War so I simply made up that fact of Reznov and the veterans talking. The part where Dragovich, Steiner and Kravchenko pacing around Mason is from the second-to-the-last _Black Ops _level Revelations. The orphanage part was inspired by Higurashi Kai Episode 14, which explores Takano's past. I wanted it to be the same orphanage where little Takano experienced hell on earth. I just wanted to give those guys some payback, would you agree? And sorry about Chernov, the Russian soldier in World at War, since I gave him cholera, I'm not bashing his character, just giving reason why he didn't appear in Reznov's letter scene. The title above is derived from the Mark Bernes song Tyomnaya Noch/Тёмная ночь(Dark Is The Night). The term _nomenklatura_ is a bureaucrat in the Soviet Union, whose position he owes solely to the Party. The woman in the pictures as inspired by the picture Simpler Times by ~SeaChelles09 in deviantart.


	3. Arrangements

**Arrangements**

A/N: It's me, guys. Here's the third chapter of _Dear You Dedushka_. I thought I'd never get this through seeing how the new _Black Ops 2_ had derailed some of my ideas but I've had some encouragement from a friend. I also have no knowledge of the new Black Ops: Declassified but seeing that I have Reznov alive in my story, I'll make a whole new spin in the time between the end of Black Ops and the time of the story. A fair warning and apology though as this chapter is mostly background exposition, mostly Hudson and Weaver-centric. Be prepared to see many Cold War references in this one.

* * *

><p><strong>I<strong>

Hudson regard the man sitting in front of him in the prison's interrogation room, the inmate's cuffed hands on the table. Gruff-face, blond, reminding him of a petty mob hoodlum he tailed during his training days at the CIA. In fact, this guy _was_ one. He read his police blotter. Late thirties; a resident of a village called Hinamizawa in Gifu Prefecture, Japan; busted for child abuse, blackmail and soliciting a prostitute during the June of last year. The rogue CIA agent found him loathsome alright. At least the mob man seemed like a decent fellow, having a loving wife and kids he sent to school with earnings from his occupation of questionable legality, a numbers racket; this one was a nasty independent, for-profit operator. From the details of the man's beating of his nephew and niece reminded him of the dirty deeds he had done and presided over. Kidnappings, torture of prisoners, the whole nine yards.

Yet, it did not open any guilt feelings in Hudson. This former Screaming Eagle paratrooper and graduate of Georgetown University had been a veteran of countless covert operations, some which are classified to this day. He knew that serving his country in that manner he is required to commit acts that would be contrary to the laws of man and morality, often a regular basis in volatile, stressed-filled environments with overarching political ramifications behind his work, a world of ambiguity below the surface which is subordinate to its own brand of logic incomprehensible to most people who are never familiar with it, nevertheless determines the fate of nations, even the world - those who try to rationalize its dangerous contradictions with their own limited understanding risk being broken in the end, a common fate for most idealists, who often turned into more pragmatic, more cynical individuals later on. He also knew that most of the people he fought, killed or otherwise harmed had the same sentiment for their country or what they perceived was a just cause. Many understood, if mostly poorly, the risks involved, others don't even know them at all. Therefore, while he regretted many of his actions to some degree and there was some collateral damage and certainly was not saintly as hell, he did not lose sleep over it and felt he had made a difference somewhere. In his line of work, torture is a legitimate tool of operation and something to expected, if feared, as an occupational hazard. You tortured people who knew the risks of their calling and in theory can fight back or got what was coming to them; you don't beat children because they're children!

No one could be sure of what Hudson truly felt as his sunglasses shielded his eyes from the other man's scrutiny. He preferred it that way, he was not going to give this small-time piece of garbage an inch in anyway. His training and experience taught him that.

"So what is a _gaijin_ doing here, huh?" the man snarled. Hudson thought his attempt to put on a tough front a pathetic one.

Still calmly assessing him, Hudson replied politely, "Forgive me for taking some of your time, sir. You call me Mr. Roth. And your name would be..."

"Please, don't fuck with me, _Mr_. Roth," he replied rudely," if that is your real name. I know you read my record so why don't you just tell me and no bullshit."

"If you insist, Mr Teppei." Hudson was unmoved by his uncouth behavior. "I'm a representative of a company that does work for the US government. My government and your government has come to an agreement over a small favor we owe them. I'm here to collect that here."

The man laughed harshly. "You, Americans? Ha! You Americans think you owned the world. Putting military bases here and there, fighting your dirty wars or having an idiot to do so, playing your little spy games, feeling so superior wherever you go. You think we owe? Fuck you! Vietnam and Iran proved your not shit."

The ice cube did not care for his rant but was amused by his scant knowledge of world events. He would be useful. It's time for his spiel. "No need to be belligerent, Mr Teppei. You haven't considered my offer yet."

Teppei looked puzzled. "What offer?" He looked suspiciously at Hudson. This American was offering a way out but for what? What for? Teppei had screwed and was screwed over by people before, most notably the latter, in which landed him in jail, that little ungrateful bitch of a niece and her shitty friends, in that shitty little town. He would gave anything to teach that little bitch a lesson. He was still wary of the the balding _gaijin_'s offer though. He had played this game before. He ripped off a lot of dumb bastards with Rina.

"You see," he began, "I'm here give you a way out. One with pay. You see we have vacant positions in need to be filled. The qualifications for those positions are not high, which is good for you. A man of your modest skill can do jobs with minimal requirements and draw a decent monthly salary. Discretion is advised on your part, of course. Furthermore, we can arrange a review of your legal status as required, perhaps even a possible pardon."

The word _pardon_ got his attention. He slump in his chair a bit, relaxing visibly. He was obviously in thought. Hudson gave himself mentally a smile. A double major in psychology and political science, he wedded these two not-so-mutually-exclusive courses into his work, making him into one of the most capable people fielded by the CIA, he was a master of words and his skills of commanding and managing was so much that a few colleagues feel he could have been a business executive for a finance company rather than the field operative that he is. This dolt took the bait, time to reel him in - slowly.

"So you're gonna get me out of here and get me a job?" he asked.

"Yes."

He looked at Hudson again, trying to read the man. "I don't know... This seems like too good a deal. And it smells..."

Hudson regarded him blankly. "You don't trust me?"

"I know a rat when I smell one so let's just knock off the bullshit," he said bluntly.

Granted. "It would take a while, considering your current predicament." He relaxed in his seat. "Look around, Mr Teppei. Do you honestly want to spend the next twenty years here?"

"Whaddya think?" he replied. "You're not exactly the trustworthy type. In fact, I've been fucked-over from last year. And I'm not about to land in the same fucking fire again."

"On the contrary, Mr Teppei, we care for our employees. A change in policy my company has instituted some years ago. Naturally there will be risks. However, you're just one of the many in my list. And I have long list, you're not the only one with similar qualifications. Also, you have a number of problems here too. I want to consider for a while as I have others to interview. Thank you for your time, Mr. Teppei." He stood and was about to call the guard.

"Hey! Wait!" Teppei started up. "Yeah, I just thought about that. Now tell me, how'd you set this up? Getting me to talk to you."

The ice cube was satisfied with the direction this interview was taking. He talked down harder targets. They both took their seats again. "Oh, the interview. Like I said, we invoke an agreement our governments had signed and I'm here to fulfill it. It's an obscure one, really. Not many people no about it and no one minds. That's why we're here."

"Why me?"

"Your name was randomly selected from the prison archives."

"And what kind of work does your company do?"

Hudson smiled, this time for real. "Odds and ends. You'll be surprised by how large a niche with fill in. As for employment, you'll enjoy a number of different incentives that allow you to do your work."

Teppei smiled slyly. The wheels in his mind were turning. "How about a nice office with a secretary for me to fuck?"

Hudson did not show his displeasure for the man's vulgarity. "That could be arranged if you continue your services with us. That is of course if we're interested. I'll be honest with you, your initial position would technically be temporary. But after a few months of evaluation with the recommendation of your co-workers, you'll be a full-time employee." He took a sip from a cup of tea that had gone cold during the entire time he was here.

"I'll take it," Teppei decided. What this guy was offering was a way more welcoming alternative than staying in this hole for the next two decades. If what this guy's saying is true, then he was going live like a king and, if he get their blessing, get his vengeance on his niece and her friends.

"So we're done here." They both stood up, he took his hands cuffed hands to shake them. "Welcome to Communications Integrity, Mr. Teppei. I'll see you out of here within the week." They both left the room with Teppei escorted by a prison guard. He went to the warden's office where he thank him for a good interview.

"I wish you success with your new book, Professor Roth."

"It was rather enlightening," Hudson said. He later took out a paper bag out of his folder and set it on the table. The warden took it, the whole exchange was done discretely and quickly. Later, Hudson left the prison.

Moving through the city streets in an effort to identify and ultimately loose whatever tails the CIA or anybody else had deployed, he finally reached a crowded restaurant to have a drink at the corner seat where he could watch people come in and out to scrutinize them. After that he checked his watch. Weaver should be here about... now.

The moment his watch hit the exact second, a black Toyota sedan appeared. Hudson stood up and walked to the entrance then moved a few blocks to an alley where the sedan was parked. He entered the passenger seat with Weaver at the wheel.

"How was it?" Weaver asked.

"Quite long but we got our boy," he replied. Hudson sat beside and closed the door. The sedan then backed out of its parking space and left the restaurant.

* * *

><p><strong>II<strong>

Hudson had succeeded in his chore of the day. It was for an upcoming operation they planned for the beginning in the next two month, an excursion into the Golden Triangle, which overlapped between Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand. A friend of his at Langley had informed them about possible Soviet intervention in the opium trafficking there. A contact of Mason's within the Pentagon further corroborated the statement, providing him data on rebel groups, Burmese Army, Thai Army, police and crime syndicates and their respective operations in the region. Some of it hints to KGB involvement in the various factions fighting over control of the drug trade. Something like that was too good to pass up despite their status of being among the top ten of the agency's shitlist. In fact, they've been this sort of thing since then.

Hudson stated, "If we do this, the Japanese mob and their allies in the rightwing nationalists associations will have a hard time operating at the South-East Asian mainland. Leonid would have a hard time trying to contact them as we put the heat on him in Indonesia." Leonid was a senior KGB agent and one of the co-conspirators of a clique that tried wrest power in Moscow during Charybdis. He escaped the shakeup of the upper echelons of the Soviet intelligence community and had been hopping from outpost to outpost ever since. Killing Leonid would finish off the last of Vanya's band."

"Leonid would have nowhere to hide," Weaver added. "The Kremlin would have no trouble finding the bastard."

"How's Kristina?" Hudson asked.

"Whoa, whoa, there," Weaver replied. "Please don't start with the in-law jokes." The ice cube let out a short laugh, which was rare for him.

Indeed it was. Mason and Weaver have become in-laws after they rescued Weaver's niece, Kristina Raskova. Among the few good things that came out of this was love that nurtured by Mason and Kristina. That love was what enabled both of them to heal after the hell of '78.

"Kristina's doing fine," Weaver said. "It's a shame we both have to leave her and David at Alaska." He turned to Hudson. "Remind me why we have leave them there and not at Canada?" Weaver referred to an emigre community in Canada consisting of Russian and Ukrainians who immigrated from the Russian Empire since the late 19th century, and more came in in final mass exodus in the thirties, during Stalin's Purges. His mother had a lot of friends there which he came to know over the years.

"Alaska's the last place the Agency will be looking for them there," Hudson explained. "They've looked for us there once. They don't usually look under the same rock twice. Plus, Canada, for all intents and purposes, is the CIA's turf."

"That would make them potential hostages." Weaver's voice was controlled, yet it betrayed his worry over Kristina's safety.

"You have worried had Hoover still been the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. He's dead now, and with Kain gone, we have nothing to worry about. They're also under the watchful of friends of the Mason family."

"You're right," Weaver conceded. "I just hoped that we don't have to run away all the time. I want to get to know my nephew better. I want him to live the American Dream, have friends, have a life without feeling a part of it missing."

"That part would be us, right?"

"Yeah." He kept his eyes on the road but Hudson sensed the longing in his colleague's face.

"I know how you feel, Weaver." He had that feeling too. "I haven't seen my family since '79."

"At least they're safe," the one-eyed Russian conceded. "It's the price we pay for what we do."

"No coming back, isn't it?" Hudson said. "This kind of life will take its toll on us one way or the other."

"But we did hell of a lot of things together. We make our lives count for something. Our 'burned'status, in twisted way, is a blessing to make our lives count."

One of the paradoxes involving their status as rogue agents was that they were free to pursue their own operations. It was partly due to the fact they were still hunted by the CIA, which required them to mobile; partly to the restless motivation to stay in the game. For them, they felt that just because they're out did not mean they should stop fighting. Even when Operation Charybdis was still hot on their heels after their rescue of Woods from a facility in the Appalachian mountains Mason, Hudson, and Weaver still had time to go after a lead that led them to extract Reznov out of Chile under the noses of Pinochet's men. They learned from him a string of Soviet operations spanning the globe. At first it was thought they were trying to retrieve the data necessary to bring back Nova-6 production, hence the search for his brother in Johannesburg. But they were far bigger than that. It was a plan to topple the West: an ambitious synchronized ploy to drive a wedge between America and her allies, destabilize NATO, and ensure Soviet hegemony throughout the world. They also uncovered massive evidence of corruption within the CIA whose exposure would cause a great political crises at a time when the public was still reeling from the combined political fallout from both the Watergate scandal and the ending of America's involvement in Indochina; the civil unrest of the past decade; a worsening economy that had suffered greatly during the latter two. The internal problems and scandals alone can be exploited to great effect by the Soviets to stir the second round of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks(SALT II) into their favor and sabotage the peace talks between Egypt and Israel.

It also forced them to do acts which at the time were unthinkable. During their time in Africa, they meet with the Chinese station chief in Tanzania where they arranged for defection in exchange for vital information against the Russians. They were hoping to stall for time or at least prod the Chinese into taking action against the Soviets. The Chinese station chief was dubious about this and had them held incommunicado for a week while he relayed this incredible nugget of information to his superiors and await their reply. After the week, they were let go but not after being fully stocked with cash, false papers and a list of contacts which would allow them to sneak into Europe unnoticed. It didn't went well when they set ashore in Europe two weeks later as they have apparently set off alarms throughout the continent when every intelligence agency and radical group was apparently after their hides, in fact they thought the Chinese had set them up but it paid great dividends when they escaped across the Sino-Soviet border and into Xinjiang. They revealed to them Vanya's plans to decapitate Chinese leadership and provoke a crisis of succession. Alerted to this, they promptly stopped KGB special operation squads, which consisted of Spetsnaz operatives drawn from various Siberian ethnicities who could easily pass off as Chinese at a distance The Chinese gave them their full, albeit unofficial, support. The struck at Soviet activities around the world and helped drive Vanya and his cohorts out of Moscow.

"The funny thing is in this day and age, the Chinese are helping us out in Afghanistan while they sell arms to liberation movements in Africa," Weaver observed.

"Way of the world. We owe our debt to the Chinese though," Hudson told Weaver.

"Gotta thank Nixon for that ping-pong diplomacy idea," Weaver observed. "If it wasn't for Dick, they'd have us work around the shithouses collecting fertilizer."

"Or they could have just given us back to Kain and friends," Hudson added wryly. When entered that Chinese embassy in Tanzania, they were at the ropes. Hudson and Mason realized that they can't keep running on their forever, especially with with every intelligence outfit from Washington to Pretoria to Ankara out to get them. When they gave themselves up for defection, they had two gut-wrenching fears: the fear of having turned traitor to America, to the home they swore to defend, even if it had turned on them and the fear of being handed over back to them by the Chinese. Those fears died down when they received tea from the station chief himself and they were allowed to stay in the embassy's residential compound in relative comfort and total isolation.

* * *

><p><strong>III<strong>

"So you know Japanese?" Weaver asked.

"Yes," Hudson replied. "Learning Japanese was one of my language courses during my training in Langley. It spark my interest in this country, I especially like its literature."

"Literature, like Pushkin and Lermontov?" Weaver noted. Hudson looked at him curiously. "Hey, I read. Gotta get in touch with my roots, you know."

"I'm not judging you, Weaver. Just that you never talked about it."

"No one asked," Weaver said defensively, causing a smile on the ice cube's face.

"Well, it's their folktales that I like about them. I got hold of Lafcadio Hearn's _Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things_. Read it and it got me hooked into buying more books on Japanese folk literature."

"Hmm, that would explain your smooth ways with the locals." Hudson's way with words have extended even to the Land of the Rising Sun. He was able to persuade many locals to talk to him in depth than what a _gaijin_ would normally encounter, but Hudson, smooth operator that he is, can make people open and rocks sing their secrets out.

"You always introduce yourself as a professor," the Russian noted. "Was that something from your Georgetown days?"

"Guilty as charged. I was thinking about being one myself until Marshall Bryant recommended me to the CIA. Besides, the locals tend to have more respect for a man of letters than anyone else."

"He never knew that I'll be saving the world twice and ending up like this." He turned to Hudson. "Bryant, I mean."

"How about being burned by Langley?" Weaver asked.

Hudson's slight smile left his face. "Thank goodness, he wasn't around during Charydbis. The old man would die of a heart attack." Hudson still had some affection for his mentor an recruiter, Marshall Bryant. To this day, Hudson still considered the man his hero.

Weaver, thinking, he may have made a mistake, added, "You know, if we meet him in person and tell our side of the story, he'll commend you."

"I'm sure he will. To us, I believe. Not just me."

The entire world was proverbially against during Operation Charybdis. Overnight, after the rescue of Woods in the Appalachians, they were virtually alone, old allies turned on them. Enemies were eager to pounce them, all they while as they put their lives on the line to uncover the truth and stop the world from the brink of annihilation. Lesser men would have broken from this burden, and thus doomed humanity in the long term and the four had questioned themselves whether they'll live nest day and put another piece to the horrific puzzle that was Vanya's conspiracy.

Yet, they were able to succeed in spite of the odds heavily stacked up against them, but these same odds have taken a toll on them heavily: Reznov lost the use of his legs in Johannesburg to MI-6's SAS sweeper Jonathan; Hudson's family was threatened twice by the CIA; Mason and Woods had suffered a number of nervous breakdowns in the course of their war against the Soviets and with their own brethren within the CIA's Special Activities Division, which made them a violent catatonic and a vengeful trainwreck respectively. Many people, many allies, paid dearly for helping them. The most horrible moments of their ordeal haunt them at times. A hand gesture here or a certain word at single moment is all that takes to bring them back to those events that they would prefer to stay in the darkest corners of their minds.

"God... I can still hear the screams," Weaver muttered in a choked voice.

Hudson stared at the road as he recalled at that moment in that KGB site near Klaipeda. When they incarcerated there after the combined KGB/Spetsnaz raid in that abandoned gasworks in Warsaw, the Gdansk spy network which provided them safe entrance into Poland was brought over by airlift to a camp outside the city to process the prisoners which included the families of the network members. During their stay in the asylum called "Hotel Klaipeda", they have seen dozens of people walk by their cells, led guards to to be interrogated by the KGB, sometimes brutally.

It was one of their worst moments in Charybdis, listening to people die in agony and doing nothing about it. When their turns came, it took a turn for the worse. Prior to their date with the interrogators, they have been subject to verbal and physical abuse by their captors. Their meals were thrown at them during unpredictable moments, consisting of leftovers from the mess hall, sometimes rotten. When they regained a bit of strength, they were subject to random roll calls were they forced to recite their identities in an effort to force them to reveal themselves. Hudson knew that KGB knew who they really were and simply did that in an effort to break them. They sent them each to a delousing chamber to force them hold their breath while the insecticide filled the space inside, not kill them but to make them suffer. When their time came up, they were beaten with switches, electrocuted, water cured by icy water, forced to make relentless confessions by KGB commandant Burov. The kicker was when they were forced to watch them make a mock execution of a young woman. Burov, using a Smith & Wesson Model three revolver most likely taken from a Czarist aristocrat, did a Russian roulette on her. She cried relentless with each click of an empty chamber, a one in six chance of ending her life. At seventh time, Mason had it. He longer became a man but a wild animal and tried to break out his chair to attack Burov but he only got a beating for it.

Then came that monster Anton Vanya. The suffering woman was finally killed by Vanya through a quick breaking of the neck by his hands. That moment was what made flesh the terrifying persona portrayed by his skimpy CIA file. Anton Vanya was the protege of Mason's old enemy, Nikita Dragovich. The man was poised to succeed where the general failed. A hardcore communist with a hatred for the West, Vanya sought to destroy the West politically by destabilizing them. To that end, he supported aggressive espionage and terrorist activity against the West. This in turn forced the CIA and their allied intelligence agencies to use heavy-handed tactics against them such as the propping up of dictatorships around the world and the use of Operation Gladio against leftist violence throughout Europe. Terror alone would not satisfy Vanya's requirements thus he allied himself with Yuri Andropov.

Andropov, head of the KGB had been before his tenure of that organization's chairmanship the Soviet ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian revolution and was a key player in its suppression. During that time, he witnessed with horror from the windows of the embassy the hanging of officers of the Hungarian secret police on lampposts by revolutionaries. He was forever haunted by the speed an all-powerful one-party Communist state had begun to topple. From then on, he believed only armed force was the only guarantor of the state's survival. During his time the KGB was instrumental in suppressing any sort of dissent that threaten the regimes of fellow communist states: the crushing of Prague Spring in 1968, the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and martial law in Poland in 1981. Vanya was able to convince the then chairman of the KGB to support his scheme against the West by providing falsified intelligence about the West's plans for subversion against the Warsaw Pact, the eastern equivalent of NATO, including the Soviet Union. As Andropov was a full voting member of the Politburo, he promised him to provide aid during the party meetings, a slow but ruthless coup in order to exploit the success of Vanya's plans.

It took them five days before they can escape from that hellhole in Klaipeda. Woods and Weaver knocked the guards out of their posts one night, crept into Burov's quarters and brought the KGB colonel to his own torture chamber where, after liberal amounts of his own medicine, extracted from him hints of Vanya's activities in Moscow. Afterwards, they went on a wild chase across the Soviet Union to rescue Weaver's niece Kristina, piecing together the rogue colonel's plans against the world and within the country along the way and avoiding the merciless state security organ that hounded their every step. After a difficult battle in Moscow, the five men wanted men of the CIA paid a visit to Andropov in his dacha in the hills outside the great city. They revealed to him the truth of Vanya's deception. They also threatened to expose his collusion with Vanya to fellow Politburo members unless he ceases all his ongoing operations and revoke the kill order place on their heads. The KGB chairman and full voting member of the country's most powerful political circle choked in rage as Mason and Hudson discussed their terms but he was totally caught in a corner where he had no other way out. He intended to make points with the 'Buro by manipulating the SALT II talks into their favor but with their threat of blackmail, he had to cease his operations against SALT II immediately and pull the plug on Vanya's. They then made their arduous journey to China.

With his "sponsor" ceasing all operations Vanya is now all alone and that forced him into hiding for a month until he resurfaced again to make his last act. It was to activate all KGB and terrorist sleeper cells across Europe in order to cause mayhem. The overall effect would not lead to his desire of total war but would destroy their confidence in their own stability. He was stopped when a Chinese intelligence ship carrying the five intercepted the Soviet intelligence ship carrying Vanya in the Aegean Sea. During the ensuing battle, the Chinese ship, a Q-ship, actually, straddled the Russian ship with gunfire, which it was helpless to respond. The Chinese sent a boarding party against them via helicopter with Mason, Weaver, Woods, and Hudson aboard with a team of Chinese commandos, followed by more parties on boats. The boarding action went well except when the Russian ship decided to ram theirs broadside, then it exploded violently, damaging both vessels. Vanya had scuttled his ship in effort to bring the other down with him. This resulted in a confusing and dangerous melee aboard two ships sinking together between the Russians and Chinese. During the battle Mason and Vanya locked combat in the bridge viciously. Vanya was in better physical condition than Mason but the American managed to endure the blows long enough to turn the tables on him, defeating the Russian and putting an end to him and his mad schemes. Then they disappeared from sight when a Greek freighter found the remains of the battle and picked up survivors, taking refuge for some time in one of the nearby islands before they moved on again.

"So what do we need to spring a petty con from a Japanese prison anyway?" Weaver asked.

"Trust me," Hudson replied, "Mr. Teppei has some use for us in our upcoming operation. We'll cause a lot of skirts to fly here and there."

There was also some targets of opportunity here in Japan which interested Hudson. With the country's economic rise came a growing undercurrent of nationalism, a number of people were clamoring for the return of Japan as a world power. Some of the more active groups want a revision of the constitution and the closure of American bases in Japan. Another development was the new history textbooks removed any mention of Japan's atrocities. Hudson found this to be a disturbing development. Education is key to controlling the masses, especially the next generation. If you create a whole new perspective and ethos for them, they can support whatever long-term policy that suits the creators. The Iranian revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, was successful in that regard by appealing to traditional Shi'a ethos and using it permeate nationalist and populist sentiment into defining a new way of life and governance, which resulted in the fall of Shah Reza Pahlavi and his dynasty, the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Iranian hostage crisis. This situation was somewhat similar to Japan's road to war during the first half of the 20th century, minus the overthrew of the monarchy and the establishment of a theocratic state. The fact that the bottom-up loyalty which this country's society is known for they can easily garner support for their proposed policy changes and the insularity of the Japanese people means that they could not be easily swayed by world opinion, at least at the grassroots level. He found himself rooting for the leftist groups and personalities, even the local commies should this eventuality arise.

Also there were some considerable tension between their countries over trade policy. The Japanese government instituted a number of laws designed to protect their industries from foreign competition and their market from a flood of imports. American companies were having a hard time doing business here for that reason. That did not make anything better with an American market awash with Japanese goods and the auto industry, notably the Detroit-based Big Three triumvirate of GM, Ford, and Chrysler were not happy about it. He learned a number things on the economic side that the Japanese were belatedly trying to play catch-up: for all their successes in both here and worldwide many of the major industries suddenly found themselves at a lose. Nakasone was doing his best to stall for time until his country's industries can effectively hold their weight in the open market. Particularly, two groups were of critical importance to him as constituents: inefficient or "declining" producers, manufacturers, and distributors, who could not compete if faced with full foreign competition and struggling new industries that he intend to protect until they could manage themselves in their own. However, it did not enamor it to Americans at home, especially now that Japanese business were beginning to heavily invest their money within the United States itself, with the intention of buying controlling stock of many high-technology firms to maintain their now-famous edge in research and development. He had to admit that half the computers in Langley and the Pentagon were made in Japan. Japanese vehicles were getting very popular with people stateside. Even the car they were using was being a smooth ride for an old vehicle.

He had done his research of all the things he could find out about the country's political climate. Prime Minister Yasushiro Nakasone. elected in late 1982, was known to have visited Yasakuni Shrine, a shrine and war memorial built for the country's war dead, which included 14 Class A War criminals. Another thing he found was that he sent a letter criticizing General MacArthur's occupation of the country, a ballsy move by the standards of the time. The great general angrily threw the letter in the wastebasket in response. That gotten him credentials in the political right. No surprise as he was influential in the providing the funds to start research into nuclear power in 1955(he did a paper of that during his early days at Langley, citing the very real possibility of Japan acquiring the bomb within a few years, not his proudest moment as his bosses and Hudson himself considered it gaffe, although he was having the suspicion that they were now reading his paper again in light of the country's muscle-flexing). Yet, this was the same man who was trying to promote stronger relations between both countries in matters of security. No surprise there, as the Soviet were just proverbially a few blocks away, having grown strong at the expense of the West in general, especially America in particular after Vietnam; the Japanese were naturally worried about having the Red Bear looking at them again with covetous eyes. Their war in Afghanistan, their adventurism in Africa, Latin America, and increased intelligence activities and support of revolutionary elements, i.e. terrorists, against the rest of the world, were writings on the wall. In a number of war games, the Soviets can invade and successfully hold the island of Hokkaido in the north, but the possibility exists of an invasion from Korean peninsula after combined Soviet and North Korean forces swiftly crush all opposition south of the DMZ, the peninsula holding an appropriate dagger-like shape against the country's southern flank, not to mention the KGB and GRU were engaged in industrial and scientific espionage here just as they did in the West, swarming all over all the scientific data they could find like ants in a sugar jar in an urgent effort to improve their own technological and industrial base to compete with the West.

Fortunately, the country's memories of the Second World War were still strong and the "peacenik" factions within the government and general public were doing quite well in holding back the tide. For now, anyway. People were now calling into debate Article 9 of Japan's postwar constitution, which officially denounced war as an instrument of national policy. The Japanese Self-Defense Force, starting out as the National Police Reserve, was graduating from a sort of anomaly in the military community aimed at internal security and disaster relief(American forces stationed in Japan provide protection against a Soviet invasion) to a proper army. There was indication that its budget was being raised higher lately, with focus in upgrading its arsenal and capability although much of it is still subject to internal political scrutiny. This also reminded him how the politics worked differently from country to country, not just the public and the legislative sides to it but the more subtle one, the kind found in the smoke-filled backrooms of power. He may not have the full picture of what goes on behind the political closed doors here but what he did know was similar to 19th century politics with Feudal-era court intrigue, smoky backroom with a twist not seen anywhere else in the Far East, not in Indonesia, nor Taiwan, nor in Korea, the former South Vietnam, or Philippines. He mused, _So Nakasone-san, how much of this was your work and how much of it was enabled by your peers? Did you do all of those on your own or was it serve whatever closed circle you answer to? Are your calls for friendship with America really for genuine security or are we just means to an end? _He had no doubt he was a nationalist charting his country's future but if that future was to be achieved through very-underhanded means, at the expense of lives or the future of others, he will put a stop to that.

Hudson asked Weaver, "How was the news on that pharmaceutical plant?"

Without letting his eyes off the road, Weaver reached out from under his seat and handed a local newspaper to Hudson. "Congratulations, Ice Cube. We've shut down their business for good." On the front page was a picture of a smoking building surrounded by police and firemen. The headline read, "MEDICAL PLANT BURNED DOWN!"

Weaver then asked worriedly, "We were thorough with it, right?"

"It was a clean job. Destroy the lab equipment, eliminate all on-site personnel, capture all files - " Hudsone gestured to a bag full of papers and hard drives - "and use extremely lethal nerve gas to dispose all possible contagion. It fell like clockwork."

"You sure? Mason and Woods weren't with us." Most of their big operations were never conducted without their full complement - Mason, Woods, Hudson, and Weaver, with Reznov providing occasional assistance, rather reluctantly as he is mostly chair-bound for after South Africa.

"Definitely. If what we got from that health official Koizumi was right, we took all their research data regarding the Alphabet Project from that site. As for the absence of Mason and Woods, it's miracle we did a two-man job with it." Hudson smiled. It wasn't exactly the first time either, they've done it before during the Project Nova crisis of '68 in Hongkong, Yamantau, and Rebirth Island but they did it with significant backup from the CIA and the Pentagon. Since they were burned in Charybdis, they had to rely on all five of each other just to survive.

"Yeah, quite literally a walk in the park compared to Rebirth, huh?" He laughed.

Hudson frowned. "Koizumi's gonna be in a shitstorm when Nakasone reads today's news for breakfast."

"He's gonna have a hard time explaining to him how the hell did their 'medical plant' spontaneously combusted under his watch." Weaver laughed. "If it isn't Nakasone, then it's his real bosses." Then he frowned "But he still remembers us from the restaurant. His government and D.C. have close intelligence ties. He'll save his own ass by handing us, Mason, Woods, and Reznov in a silver platter and get a medal for it too."

"No, he won't," Hudson replied, with a small, confident smile. "We have him starring in his own little porn flick."

Weaver felt like chuckling. "You damned Ice Cube. That's how you saved the world for us back then."

"Wait till he meets Andropov in hell."

"Nakasone and his bosses are gonna have a handful with the political fallout if they don't handle it discretely."

That musing came from a dirty little secret he found it here, which they hit last night. It was a biological weapons research and development facility. It was never clear whether it operated behind Nakasone's back or how deep was his involvement in it. What was known was that it was under the aegis of a clique called "Tokyo". Coming from a Soviet file concerning a scandal involving three JGSDF generals and corroborated by Koizumi, it was sort of an exclusive association consisting of members from the country's political, military, bureaucratic, and business elite, many of them believed to have started their careers way back before or during the Second World War and perpetuating an ideology that Japan would ascend in its rightful place as a world power against its decadent contemporaries, namely the West. These people have been a major driving force in Japanese politics, testing the waters, consolidating their power slowly from behind the scenes to ensure that they became the regents behind the throne in a resurgent Japan, a Dai Nippon Teikoku that will rise again, this time using economic and political arms to establish hegemony in Asia.

"'Tokyo'?" Weaver asked, puzzled. "You mean the Japanese government's in on this?"

Hudson gave him a brief explanation on his thoughts on "Tokyo".

"So this guys are gonna try again what they failed to do so in '41?"

"1930," he corrected. "Only this time they're using cars and computers instead of guns and troops, economic strength and political capital instead of military prowess."

Weaver stopped at a red light. "But from my experience. Uh, our experience anyway, no nation in history has ever achieved its goal without the use of its military, even without actually fighting. Economics and diplomacy alone will get you nowhere without an impressive parade of armed men who could do your intimidation and strong-arming for you."

"Japan is prospering under the protective umbrella of our forces stationed throughout Asia from Subic to Seoul, from Yokohama to Hawaii. What they're doing is preparing to that without us."

"How about Article 9? It says that they can't make war anymore."

"They've been doing that as well, in secret, and a few years after their postwar Constitution has been ratified."

"How do they do that?"

"Look here." Hudson picked up a folder and fished out a large black-and-white picture. The picture contained no date indicating when the picture was taken, simply an alpha-numeric code reference and a caption that said, "Irian Jaya, 1979." On it were a large group of men in formation in what appeared to a camp set in a tropical forest. There was a large slogan written in kanji hung on a building on the background to the left. Weaver took it and studied it.

Hudson then explained, "The sign on it says, 'Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather.' That is quote is common cited in Bushido, the code of the samurai. That man who was addressing them is Prabowo Subianto, a Kopassus officer who participated in the invasion of East Timor. On his right is Leonardus Benjamin Moerdani, a high-ranking intelligence officer of the Indonesian Armed Forces and a one of the planners of the East Timor invasion. Beside them is former JGSDF officer and known rightwing radical Takeda Ishimura. He's a good friend of Yukio Mishima. Langley believes he participated in the Balibo Five massacre as an observer." He referred to the murder of five Australian journalists covering the invasion of East Timor, killed to cover it up. "Behind him is Hakuba Takenaka, alias Okonogi, another JGSDF officer who did ten years as head of a domestic counter-intelligence unit in Central Japan. Before that, he arranged with Piazza Fontana bomber Delfo Zorzi to make in-roads with Italian and other European neo-facists organizations in exchange for asylum in Japan."

The eye-patch wearing Russian handed back the photo. "What is this? The Far Eastern version of Operation Gladio."

"Not quite. From what we read so far, they came up with the concept of stay-behind resistance forces at the same time and independent of our conception of Gladio. The Japanese even created a unit for that purpose."

"So the Japanese government has its own little private army?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes." Hudson removed a file from the folder. "Their name's Yamainu."

"Yamantau?"

"Yamainu. 'Mountain dog' in Japanese. They're a paramilitary force that existed outside the structure of the Japanese Self-Defense Force. They do the dirty work of its bosses. They were not idle in covert affairs either. According to a file I stole from CIA station chief in Tokyo, they have set up small numbers of men seconded, that is quietly retired, from the Japanese Self-Defense Force and police forces to serve as covert paramilitaries initially commanded by graduates of the World War 2-era Nakano School, secretly trained by by a number of sources such as Otto Skorzeny's Paladin Group, French Foreign Legion- on an individual basis, Indonesian Kopassus, and for once even our own Special Activities Division through Taiwan, when we were under the impression that the men were unaffiliated prior to recruitment, they grow to include convicted criminals and cadres drawn from rightwing nationalist organizations in the country."

"These guys are the Japanese answer to our Green Berets and the British Special Air Service. Something Article 9 would deny them."

"No, they're not. They tend to operate offensively and avoid contact with military forces in the places they operate. And yes they were established so that they could get around the limitations imposed by Article 9. Evidence of this was their involvement in the larger Indochina conflict secretly fighting alongside Laotian forces under Vang Pao and engaging Vietnamese penetration in Cambodia from Thai border hideouts furnished by their allies there; fought ethnic insurgencies in Myanmar and Indonesia together with their respective hosts' armies, performed intelligence-gathering operations throughout Asia."_ Without having to worry about outside infiltration or, until recently, exposure by the CIA and KGB_. "And have done mercenary work in Africa in places like Rhodesia. Well, they were mercenaries technically, only in the likes of Rennaissance-era Swiss mercenaries or Hessian regiments who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War as they were hired out in droves abroad compared to most mercenaries these days, who were often hired individually with a team of close companions and associates. Logistically, they were able to move around men, material, and funds through a network of front companies."

"No shit," Weaver exclaimed. "You mean they did mercenary work?"

"Yes." Hudson looked up. "Weaver, light's green."

"Oh yeah," Weaver said, alerted. He had been absorbed by his conversation with Hudson that it was only his prodding that alerted him to the green light. Weaver gunned the engine and they drove to the right. He looked briefly up the rearview mirror to see if anyone's following them. They did a few maneuvers. None. Good. He continued their conversation, "So, if that's the skinny we have about their adventures outside their country. How about here?"

"Their activities within their own country were mostly counter-intelligence in nature but they had been involved with the Yakuza and right-wing ultra-nationalists. They were instrumental in preventing penetration by Chinese and North Korean intelligence services. The student protests of the late sixties prompted them to branch out into paramilitary thuggery."

"My God, that sounds like Hoover's COINTELPRO," the Russian observed.

"With the shadowy methodology of a South American secret police force," he added. "They've attacked student and labor demonstrators, intimidate intellectuals and activists of "un-Japanese" persuasion, suspected forced disappearances of a number of individuals, in ways reminiscent of the mob. The report states that they were not used extensively for these aggressive purposes at home as most of its number were sent abroad for training/mercenary/intelligence work and that the heavy use of violence, however secretive, would be counterproductive in the long run. Thus, intelligence/counter-intelligence work is their bread and butter at home."

"And how about the actions of their homegrown terrorists, especially the Japanese Red Army?"

"Suffice to say, they were effective in stopping them through their characteristic use of mafia-style terror and subversion. But not enough. I don't know if it was intentional or through lack of foresight on their part that allowed the Japan Airlines Flight 472 hijacking to happen and other incidents supposedly under their watch. You don't see any explosion of violence out here, do you?"

"Of course not. This is Japan. It's the last place on earth to expect any sort of violent crime," Weaver noted.

"Exactly. This isn't Nicaragua or Chile. There's no strategy of tension here either like in Italy. How they do this, the file is rather lean on the details but it speculates that they send their boys abroad to keep them out of trouble at home."

"What better way to keep your troubled, possibly psychotic, young men in line, and also a convenient way of disposing them."

"Better than that fiasco the RoKs had at Silmido," Weaver replied.

"Those poor bastards never stood a chance." Hudson learned from his contacts within the Republic of Korea Army about a mutiny by a black operations unit in the island of Silmido, where they trained. The unit was created in retaliation for the failed assassination attempt on President Park Chung-hee at the presidential residence of Blue House for the express purpose of visiting the same on North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. Hudson knew that the mutiny was provoked by South Korean government's attempts to cover them up when North-South relations began to thaw. Ironically, it made the RoKs' hatchet job a lot easier when they revolted and escaped the island, taking a hijacked bus ride to Seoul, only to be stopped by the army, where most of them were killed and all their civilian hostages perished in the firefight. The remaining four were tried by court-martial and executed.

"Kinda like what Langley and D.C. tried to do to us," Weaver said wryly. "If it wasn't for Mason, we'd be six feet under in some barren farm in Jerkwater, Montana."

"Mason's instincts, however messed up they may be in Vorkuta, saved our asses on that regard."

Weaver decided they've discussed enough about these SOG wannabee thugs. He changed topic to something that interested him a bit, "So what was that 'medical plant' all about?"

"The key to their bid for world power," Hudson replied. "Their trump little card against the Soviets and the West." He then explained briefly what he read.

With Japan asserting its claim as a major power once again, WMDs of any kind would provide a card to play in global affairs. No nuclear weapons, though, as they still have memories of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, not to mention the horrendous effects of radiation. Chemical weapons were out of questions as the weapons and their delivery systems require a rather large storage capacity for anything larger than theater-wide tactical usage, not to mention the staggering costs required to set up an R&D base and manufacturing infrastructure needed for such a project; how such a large operation render useless the need for absolute secrecy and how those volatile weapons needed top-tier handling for transportation and use. Biological weapons provide the perfect superweapon. They already have the technology and infrastructure required to develop and manufacture them, their storage requirements were comparatively simple compared to nuclear and chemical weapons. Moreover, they have the experience: Unit 731 was their premiere bio-weapons research authority during the war. It had been active from 1935 up to the end of the war during 1945 with enormous support from the government. It was responsible for some of the Far Eastern theater's most horrendous war crimes such as human experimentation and use of bio-weapons against civilians. When the war ended, the Unit was disbanded, most of its important scientists were captured and taken to the United States for use in their own biological weapons program in exchange for immunity from war crime prosecution. The ones captured by Soviets, however, did not receive the same treatment, most likely executed or ending their days in the labor camps, the Russkies got what they needed from captured German scientists, material' and files, Project Nova being such a shining example.

"Germ warfare?!" he asked in shock.

"Yes," the ice cube confirmed. "They've been developing a number of weaponized pathogens over the years. Some of them are your run-of-the-mill varieties like smallpox and anthrax. They have some that don't target people but rather livestock and crops. They've also developed counter-measures for their own bugs. But their most prized creation is a local bug that seemed to make meningitis, rabies, typhoid fever, kuru and even syphilis look like garden vegetables. Designation: η-173."

Weaver looked intrigued. "What does that bug do?"

"It's a parasite, actually. It attacks the nervous system, particularly the brain and it induces drastic behavioral changes in its victims. It seemed to triggered by moments of great psychological stress. Who does that sound like to you?"

Weaver got the gist of Hudson's question. "Jesus, that sounds like Mason."

"That's what it does, only as far as the file on it is concerned. When activated it, it will cause anxiety and paranoia in the victim. It will progress to the next stage where the victim becomes increasingly disturbed, making him or her prone to violent actions. Finally, it erodes their mental state so severely that the victim experiences visual and audio hallucinations. Finally, the hallucinations become more vivid, including sensations of insects crawling under the skin, forcing the victim to scratch the area of occurrence out, usually on the arms and throat. Scratching to the point of actually clawing flesh, resulting in death from severe bleeding. That's what I was able to skim from the files that is."

Weaver grimaced and gripped the steering wheel tightly. "You gotta be fucking kidding me. What if-"

"Contaminated?" Hudson said coolly. "I doubt it. We wore the hazmat suits and underwent full decontamination before we egress from that facility. We followed their instructions by the letter in getting in out, up to blowing it with its own self-destruct sequence."

Weaver calmed down a bit, drawing breath. "So... we destroyed a super-bug factory back there?"

"Yeah, we did. It's all behind us now. The Japanese will have no way of offensive capability against us or the world now." It better be that way.

"Fuck _them_," Weaver cursed in disgust. "Those bastards never learn."

Hudson stated, "Just the upper crust. At least the ones that lived in comfort while the bombs rained on their cities, the ones that did not suffer radiation from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ones that did not starve from privation, and kept their hands clean from the terrible things they did. They're stoking the fires of vengeance of the ones who lived through the war as soldier and civilian and asking their children to carry on their legacy of nationalistic arrogance and Bismarckian self-interest." The Georgetown scholar was offended by this rise of nationalism; mostly to the way their war crimes were whitewashed in their history as well as the proclamation in the shrine that the men who died, who committed war crimes, were heroes on a crusade to liberate and lead Asia. It was almost like an abusive spouse has laid legal claim to the custody of his long-suffering wife's children and their inheritance.

"Jesus, you sound like Klaipeda all over again," Weaver noted uneasily.

"Those people...," Hudson choked in a rare display of emotion, "I'll never understand or forgive what they did there."

The two men were glum. In the facility were patients in beds screened by transparent plastic tarps, connected by to oxygen tanks and machinery that monitor their conditions and maintain their bodily functions to an extent. They were strapped to their beds, pale, gaunt and bleary-eyed, and bleeding. When they met the two, they screamed hysterically. The men were horrified and disgusted by what they saw. They had found the test subjects for the pathogen η-173. In their minds they returned to to Hotel Klaipėda, the gulags in Sibera and prisons of Indochina. The poor men and women in the room were dying slowly, painfully and without dignity. They remembered raising their silenced submachineguns to them to sleep, clicking the safeties off. But they hesitated. They could not bring themselves shoot them like dogs just as the MVD firing squads did in the gulags. Hudson them took an effort, at the risk being attacked by the alternately violent and calm test subjects, and ended their lives one by one with a syringe. Weaver did the same. They told themselves that they were not murderers as they calmed each subject and patiently administered a lethal but painless dose. They gave them something their cruel captors denied them: a peaceful and quite end. The thoughts were still there as they drove down the road to perform their next chore of the day.

* * *

><p>Author's note: While this is a work of fiction, a lot of the elements such as people, places and events were real. Operation Gladio, SALT II, the Silmido Revolt were real. Delfo Zorzi and his defection to Japan was real. Leonardus Benjamin Moerdani and Prabowo Subianto were real Kopassus officers, the former was one of the architects of the invasion of East Timor while the latter participated in the invasion in a mission to capture the first Prime Minster of East Timor. Yukio Mishimo was an author who led the abortive coup in November 25, 1970 at the JSDF's headquarters in an effort to restore imperial rule. Nakasone's letter to MacArthur did happen. As for fiction, the disease, η-173 or Hinamazawa Syndrome, was a key plot element in Higurashi, it was the catalyst for the actions of some of the characters their. Teppei, mentioned above, was the abusive uncle of the Hojo siblings, Satoko and Satoshi. The Yamainu acted as the muscle of the villains throughout the main series of Higurashi, serving under "Tokyo". Communications Integrity is a fictional private intelligence company in the Sam Peckinpah action movie The Killer Elite, not to be confused with the 2011 movie starring Jason Statham and Robert De Niro.<p> 


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